Whatever your opinion of Argentinian director Gaspar Noé, you have to agree that you’re unlikely to forget one of his films in a hurry.
Despite having seen it only once at a retrospective in London’s BFI, that intensely disturbing and completely horrifying scene from Irreversible is likely to be burnt onto my frontal lobes for all of time. They’re hardly chilled out Sunday afternoon viewing, as Noé’s movies always make you sit up and pay attention, and that’s something that looks to be continued with his upcoming effort Psyché.
According to Government funding group Tax Shelter Belgium (via Google Translate), the film will be set in the mid 1990s and revolve around twenty urban dancers gathering to rehearse in a disused boarding school in the middle of a forest. So far, so StreetDance 3D, right?
Then things take a turn for the Noé, with the plot summary teasing:
The atmosphere becomes electric and a strange madness seizes them all night. It seems obvious to them that they have been drugged, but they do not know by whom or why. Soon it is impossible for them to resist their neuroses and psychoses, chilled by the electric and increasingly hypnotic musical rhythms… While some are in paradise, most of them plunge into hell.”
Yesss. Bring it! Watching a whole bunch of street dancers losing their minds in the middle of a forest and succumbing to their dark desires sounds like a pretty good time at the cinema to me. Given that it’s set in the 1990s, let’s hope we get a classic rave soundtrack, too, hopefully with a bit of Orbital, The Prodigy and maybe a couple of hits from The Chemical Brothers.
According to the website, Psyché is due to wrap sometime this spring, so perhaps we might be seeing it released in late 2018 or early 2019. As always, watch this space for more.
