Noé was born on 27 December 1963 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[2] His father Luis Felipe Noé, is a notable Argentine artist, writer, and intellectual.[3] His father is of Italian descent, while his mother Nora Murphy is of Irish descent.[4] He has a sister named Paula.[5] He lived in New York City until age five,[4] after which point his family returned to Argentina.[6] In 1976, they emigrated to France to escape the military dictatorship occurring in Argentina at the time.
His work has been strongly associated with a collection of films often described as new extreme films. Highlighting their challenging sexual and violent bodily imagery, Tim Palmer has described them as part of a cinéma du corps (cinema of the body), and a cinema of 'brutal intimacy' because of its attenuated use of narrative, generally assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, a treatment of sexual behavior as violent rather than mutually intimate, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair.[8]
Noé often directly addresses the audience in confrontational ways, most notably in I Stand Alone, when an intertitle warns the audience that they have 30 seconds to leave the cinema before the final violent climax. In a different way, this can be seen in Irreversible, in which the 10-minute long single-take rape sequence has frequently been read as an assault on viewers, as well as a depiction of an assault on the female character.
Collaborations
Gaspar Noé and Lucile Hadžihalilović have repeatedly collaborated with each other on film projects. In the early 1990s, Noé co-founded the production company Les Cinémas de la Zone with Hadžihalilović.[9] Noé operated the camera and was the cinematographer for two short films directed by Hadžihalilović: La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996) and Good Boys Use Condoms (1998). Similarly, Hadžihalilović produced and edited Carne (1991), edited Seul contre tous (1998) and was credited as a writer on Enter the Void (2009). The creative collaboration is made clear in the comparable stylistic choices across these early films, most clearly the credit sequences and the marketing designs. In 2025, Noé will appear in Hadžihalilović's fourth feature film, The Ice Tower.[10]
All of Noé's feature films are shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie.[11]
The music for Irréversible was composed by Thomas Bangalter. The latter also sent Gaspar Noé a unreleased song he made circa 1995 for Climax. The song was named Sangria in reference to the movie.
Noé stated in the September 2012 edition of Sight & Sound magazine that seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven changed his life, without which experience he would never have become a director.[14] A poster for the film features notably in a scene towards the end of Irreversible.
Many of his movies feature all kind of film posters, which reflects his collection and passion for them. He's believed to be the owner of one of the three known copies of the rarest poster for M (1931 film).[15] Since Irréversible, he's kept working with French film poster designer Laurent Lufroy for all his feature films: Lufroy even appears in Love (as a policeman), Climax (as a dog-handler) and Lux Æterna (using a torch).
Noé also cites the 1983 Austrian serial killer film, Angst, by Gerald Kargl, as a major influence.[16]
Noé is a dual national of Argentina and Italy, having obtained an Italian passport through lineage, though he does not consider himself Italian.[6][18] "I have never lived in Italy, I don't speak Italian," he said in an interview. "If I hadn't had an Italian passport to travel all over the world, I would have applied for a French one."[6]
Noé suffered a near fatal brain hemorrhage in early 2020, which partly inspired the plot of his film Vortex.[19]
Alex is a character played by Cyril Roy. But in a nightmare scene, there is a brief moment during which Gaspar Noé is dressed up as Cyril Roy's character.
Besides being a filmmaker, he is an occasional photographer. In 2013, Noé shot the cover art for American singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira's debut album Night Time, My Time. Other celebrities, such as Agnès b., Todd Solondz or Stacy Martin were shot by Gaspar Noé, as well as several models for erotic magazines.[24]
Reception
Many of Noé's films were polarizing or controversial with viewers due to their inclusion of graphic scenes of violence and sexual violence. I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Enter the Void, We Fuck Alone,Love and Climax were all considered controversial for their challenging sexual and violent imagery.
Irreversible
Irreversible was hugely divisive amongst critics with journals such as Sight and Sound (UK) and Positif (France) allowing critics to openly voice their disagreements about the film.[25][26][27] It caused substantial outrage in many countries for its central scene of rape, filmed in a single take and lasting nearly ten minutes in total, with some critics comparing it to pornography because of its length and the use of a static camera,[28][29] as well as considering the film as a whole to be deeply homophobic for its hellish portrayal of a gay S&M club.[30] On the other hand, it was also frequently praised for its brutal portrayal of the horrors of rape, and its implicit challenge to viewers of the scene. Eugenie Brinkema, for instance, describes Irreversible as "ethically, generically, subjectively" disruptive: "the rape [...] is real, it is private, it is contained – it is insufferably present. [...] it interrogates vehicles of receptivity and the power and violence done to bodies by bodies".[31]
^Leigh, Danny (13 November 2015). "Interview: Gaspar Noé". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2021. We are in Paris, where he has lived since his teens, in a café near his flat in a scuffed corner of the 10th arrondissement.
^Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. (2007). 501 Movie Directors. London: Cassell Illustrated. p. 616. ISBN9781844035731. OCLC1347156402.
^ abNesselson, Lisa (20 January 1999). "Gaspar Noé". Variety. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
^Mouriquand, David (25 November 2015). "Gaspar Noé: love polarises". The Berliner. Retrieved 28 June 2024. I put in names in Love that were linked to my life: my mother's maiden name is Murphy, like the lead character; the girl Murphy fucks in the toilet is called Paula and that's my sister's name.
^Leigh, Danny (13 November 2015). "Interview: Gaspar Noé". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2021. Noé still doesn't have a French passport but after his parents fled the Argentine junta when he was 13, he finds real meaning in his adopted country's free speech
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