Lux Aeterna Trailer: Into The Cinema Inferno

Controversial cinema creator Gaspar Noé knows how to make audiences uncomfortable. His 2019 film "Lux Æterna" got a lot of love at the Cannes Film Festival, but pandemic-related delays pushed off a U.S. release. Now, three years later, the trailer for this bizarre and brutal film is finally here, celebrating the fact that it will be coming to theaters in New York and Los Angeles this May, with plans for an additional rollout thereafter. Fans who can't make it to a big city will eventually be able to catch "Lux Æterna" when it hits home video and digital later this year. Noe's 2021 film "Vortex" will be released in U.S. theaters on April 29, 2022, making the next few months pretty amazing for fans of this experimental and often shocking filmmaker. 

WARNING: The below video features strobing, flashing lights that may be harmful to photosensitive viewers. 

Noé wrote and directed "Lux Æterna," which follows a French film production that descends into chaos. Like "Vortex," which is apparently shot entirely in split-screen, this film uses split-screen images to follow multiple characters at the same time. The performers in "Lux" are playing fictionalized versions of themselves, including Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beatrice Dalle, Abbey Lee, Karl Glusman, Claude-Emmanuelle Gajan-Maull, Félix Maritaud, and Clara Deshayes. Gainsbourg plays the film-within-a-film's lead role as a witch who is burned at the stake, while Dalle plays the film's director.

The fictional film Gainsbourg is starring in is about witch trials, but technical issues and some "psychotic outbreaks" start turning the shoot into absolute chaos. Descents into chaos are kind of Noé's thing; he tends to direct films where people give into their darkest desires. His 2018 film "Climax" is a 90-minute spiral into hell when a dance company throws a party and someone spikes the punch with psychedelics. "Lux Æterna" looks like it will have the same psychedelic insanity, featuring lots of images of witches burning at the stake, people yelling at one another, and general madness. If it's anything like "Climax," that downward spiral is likely to have a body count. 

"Lux Æterna" will open in New York on May 6, 2022, and Los Angeles on May 13, 2022, with a national rollout to follow. I love Noé's work and stories about witches, so I can't wait to see how he combines the two. Whether or not there's real witchcraft happening on set, there's almost guaranteed to be bloodshed.