Gaspar Noe's 2019 Movie Lux Aeterna Will Finally Hit U.S. Theaters In Summer 2022
It's been a long road to U.S. screens for Gaspar Noé's "Lux Æterna." The movie made its world premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and was later set to play at the Tribeca Film Festival, until the event was canceled due to the pandemic. The last Noé effort to receive a release stateside was actually "Climax" back in 2018. His next film, "Vortex," is scheduled for release in the U.S. on April 29, 2022, but until now, there's been no word on when exactly "Lux Æterna" would wash ashore.
Now, Yellow Veil Pictures has announced they have acquired all North American rights to "Lux Æterna" and are planning a theatrical drop in May, followed by a full digital and collector's edition home video release later in the year. This means that the theatrical run of "Vortex" and "Lux Æterna" might overlap, allowing moviegoers in some places to catch a Noé double feature, provided you have theaters near you that are showing the movies this May.
"Lux Æterna" takes place backstage at a French film production, and like "Vortex," which is reportedly shot entirely in split-screen, this movie also often uses split-screens to follow two characters at once. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a fictionalized version of herself as well as the film-within-a-film's lead role of a witch burned at the stake. French actress Beatrice Dalle, also playing a version of herself, takes on the on-screen role of the film's director.
Actress and model Abbey Lee ("Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Neon Demon"), previous Noé collaborators Karl Glusman ("Love") and Claude-Emmanuelle Gajan-Maull ("Climax"), and Félix Maritaud and Clara Deshayes also appear "as interpretations of themselves," according to the press release.
Note: the trailer below contains flashing lights if you have a sensitivity to those.
'The set descends into aggressive chaos'
Noé has always attempted to push buttons and boundaries, whether it be the controversial rape-and-revenge depictions in "Irréversible," or the epileptic opening credits and first-person, out-of-body, God's-eye-view shots of "Enter the Void." His work isn't for everyone, but if you were a fan of the dance rehearsal unraveling into drug-induced horror in "Climax," it sounds like "Lux Æterna" might go to a similar nasty place. The press release also teases that the movie proceeds "with mounting tension" as the set of the film-within-a-film soon "descends into aggressive chaos — both in style, form, and plot."
Noé writes and directs "Lux Æterna," and he's joined as producer by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Anthony Vaccarello for the French fashion label Saint Laurent, and Gary Farkas, Clément Lepoutre, and Olivier Muller for Vixens. Distributed by Yellow Veil Pictures, "Lux Æterna" is coming your way in theaters this May.