Gaspar Noé is a filmmaker that makes art your body responds to — generally a mix of trippy euphoria or dread, crawling unease, or straight-up disgust — and CLIMAX is no exception. In fact, CLIMAX may just be the perfectly accessible, bite-sized example of Noe’s effectiveness at conjuring up exciting and unsettling cinema. In addition to all that, it also offers up more intent and message than previous Noé films, which just might make it his best film to many (though I’m still partial to the gut-wrenching provocation and bleakness of Irreversible and the astonishing odyssey of Enter the Void).

Noé has essentially created a microcosm of France (and really the entire world) with his young dance troupe, consisting of actress Sofia Boutella and a slew of professional dancers who have never acted before, that favors the allegorical over the traditional narrative — think a less surface level mother! with more pizzazz and insanity — and moves to the rhythm of a fantastically curated club mix, including Daft Punk, Aphex Twin and Giorgio Moroder. The distress and unease that has worked its way across Europe also slowly seeps into our group of dancers, who begin to tear each other apart with a little motivation in the form of liquid hallucinogens. The film seems to suggest that life is a party, one that can easily spiral out from beyond your control but should be experienced nonetheless, implying to a certain degree that the dance goes on — though not in the “happily ever after” sense.