You may remember Sofia Boutella from that small, independent remake of “The Mummy” starring Tom Cruise that flopped both critically and financially. Of course, if you remember, the studio film cost approximately $125 million to make, and only grossed around $80 million domestically at the box office. Regardless of its failure, Boutella has been an actress on the rise ever since, starring in “Atomic Blonde,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Hotel Artemis,” and Gaspar Noé‘s “Climax,” which found the actress significantly out of her comfort zone. “Climax” opened to rave reviews at Cannes, and Noé won the biggest prize at the Directors’ Fortnight: the Art Cinema Award. The controversial director, who’s not used to critical praise, doesn’t quite know what to do with it, according to Boutella.
READ MORE: Gaspar Noé’s ‘Climax’: An Orgy Of Sex, Drugs, Horror & Death [Cannes Review]
“He’s so funny, at the after party he came up to me and said, ‘Oh, the reviews are incredible!” Boutella told Collider recently.” They’re so good,’ and I said, ‘That’s great!’ and he said ‘No, I don’t know what to do!’ (laughs). ‘I don’t know how to behave and how to be when everything is so good.’…He genuinely is [freaked by it]”
Impressively, “Climax” was shot in a span of just 15 days, and the actors had only five pages of script to work with each day. Noé, known for his exhaustingly, but skillfully, long takes, would have the actors rehearse for 4 hours, then shoot around 13-17 takes, often running 8-10 minutes each. Noé kept his actors mainly in the dark about the narrative for his film.
READ MORE: ‘Climax’ Trailer: Gaspar Noé’s Latest Is A Crazed Dance Party Out Of Control
“Every single day. It was long hours, long preparation and where do we go with the story. I would go back and forth with Gaspar constantly- what we could do and what I could do, what do you want to do tomorrow? We did not know.”
The synopsis for “Climax” is as follows:
In the mid 90’s, 20 urban dancers join together for a three-day rehearsal in a closed-down boarding school located at the heart of a forest to share one last dance. They then make one last party around a large sangria bowl. Quickly, the atmosphere becomes charged, and a strange madness will seize them the whole night. If it seems obvious to them that they have been drugged, they neither know who nor why. And it’s soon impossible for them to resist their neuroses and psychoses, numbed by the hypnotic and the increasing electric rhythm of the music. While some feel in paradise, most of them plunge into hell.
“Climax” was picked up by A24 for international distribution, and will be released on September 19, 2018, in France. It has yet to be given a U.S. release date.