Vortex

An elderly couple lives in a Paris apartment crowded with books and memories. He is a film scholar writing a book about the relationship between cinema and dreams, while also dealing with a heart condition. She is a retired psychiatrist whose mind is beginning to fail as dementia takes hold. As her condition worsens, the routines that held their long life together come apart, and their son, who struggles with drug addiction, becomes part of the strain on the household. The film follows the pair as they try to care for each other while their shared time runs short.

Gaspar Noé directed and wrote the film, the ninth feature in the directing career that runs from Carne in 1991 through I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax and Lux Æterna to this 2021 release. Dario Argento, the Italian director known chiefly for his own films, plays Lui, and Françoise Lebrun plays Elle; Alex Lutz appears as their son Stéphane.

Vortex was released in October 2021 and runs 142 minutes. It is a Belgian-French drama produced by Wild Bunch, Les Cinémas de la Zone, Shelter Prod and Les Films Velvet, with Édouard Weil, Vincent Maraval and Brahim Chioua producing. On IMDb it holds 7.4/10 from around 11,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1/10 from 281 votes. A critics' rating of 8/10 from 92 reviews places it above both audience scores.