Lux Æterna

Lux Æterna follows two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who arrive at a film set where Dalle is to direct Gainsbourg as a witch condemned to burn at the stake. What begins as a shoot for a fashion-house project descends, through chaotic organization, technical failures and psychological breakdowns, into a storm of pure light. Gaspar Noé wrote and directed this French production, which runs under an hour and mixes drama, horror and thriller elements.

The film sits between Climax and Vortex in the run of features Noé has directed, after Carne, I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Destricted, Enter the Void and Love. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle play versions of themselves, and the cast also includes Abbey Lee, Karl Glusman, Clara 3000 and Claude-Emmanuelle Gajan-Maull, among roughly twenty credited performers. It was produced by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Clément Lepoutre and Noé himself, with Les Cinémas de la Zone, Saint Laurent and Vixens Films among the companies behind it.

Audience responses are moderate and broadly aligned: on IMDb it holds 6.2/10 from around 8,700 votes, and on TMDB 6.1/10 from roughly 300 votes. A critics' rating of 5.9/10 from 58 reviews places professional assessment close to those viewer scores, suggesting a film that divides its audience without strong consensus in either direction.