A Life time comes and goes.. And my friend the rose Told me this morning At dawn I was born, Baptized with the dew, I blossomed.

Happy and in love The sun shined through And by the night time I was old

My friend the rose told me that time destroys everything. Time will bring things to irreversible decay, and all we can see is who will leave first, and what will be left behind.

But the true tragedy is how will someone leave. Which ones leave first? Those whose bodies decompose first, or those whose minds decompose first before their body? If life is a dream (within a dream), then this tragedy turns it into a nightmare. As this is inevitable in our lives, then life is inherently a nightmare.

Gaspar Noé once again shows how time generates a nightmare. This is not a love story, this is a suffocating, devastating look at the inevitable —– the decay of life. The wilting of the rose.

A Life time comes and goes… And my friend the rose Told me this morning See the God who Made me Bow my head, I feel I’m falling now

Yes, I’m falling now My heart is almost bare, My feet is in the grave, Already I’m no longer there.

One thing that people often forgot is that Noé can be profound —– Enter the Void is about how important the lives of others are to our lives. One should take a look at Noé's short SIDA to see how profound he can go, especially when it comes to decaying bodies.

Even though Noé drops the things he's most notorious for, that is sex, violence, and sensory abuse, Vortex is as harsh, suffocating, realistic, and difficult as his more notorious works. At the very least, Enter The Void ended with a rebirth after all that death and decay. That does not happen in Vortex.

Once life decays, it will continue to decay. Until the heart goes bare, feet on the grave.

The decaying life is shown with tenderness and slowness, bringing Jeanne Dielman (1975) in mind, with all it's intensity over something 'off' in everyday life. The fact that the wife is stricken with Dementia will make you find something 'wrong' in every scene, be it a small detail that she missed, or a big screw-up, and it all only goes downhill. Things go wrong scene after scene after scene, making you feel that their lives will end very soon with all the decay and withering.

Even though this film is slow, with unshowy scenes and realistic performances, you can still feel pain permeating through the screens for the entire runtime. You know that they are decaying, you know that their lives will end.

The wife's dementia gives way to the tragedy of decay: who leaves, who dies, who sees your (suffering) story. Dementia is the mind leaving life itself, but it also rejects the inevitable, as it returns the mind to the point before the decay and loss. It is in a sense, a vortex that affects everything badly. And that's a whole another tragedy: To remember those who left us as if they're alive.....after leaving them while they're alive, as if they do not exist. It is essentially life itself fighting against the inevitable end.

But in the end, all must go. After all, life is a dream. We must wake up when it ends.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the style. It is very, very much a Gaspar Noé film, just without sensory abuse this time. It is him, stripped down to the basics, very minimal. The trademark Benoit Debie camerawork is as vivid and lush as ever —– reds and yellows has never looked good together before. It is still a nice film to look at.

The split-screen is also brilliant as it showcases another layer of thematic presentation: Lui and his wife is so apart in their decays that they're essentially not having the same life that they shared together. It is a sign of decay, above all. It is far from a gimmick, and the usage is much better than in Lux Aeterna. (while it is still used to show chaotic situations like in Lux Aeterna)

The ones who can believe Me, I need to hope Otherwise I ‘m nothing

A Life time comes and goes That’s what my friend the rose Said only yesterday…

• “Mon amie la rose” by Francoise Hardy

Vortex is everything. It is about the end, the decay that preceeded it, the fear of your loved ones leaving you (and even worse —– their minds leaving before their body), and how time destroys everything.

Alternate Titles: Inevitable, Kukira Kau Rumah

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