An elderly couple lives in a flat in Paris that is cluttered with books and memories.

He's a historian and film theorist writing a book about the links between cinema and dreams. She's a retired psychoanalyst who suffers from Alzheimer's.

Gaspar Noe's drama "Vortex" is an intimate drama about getting old and examines what it means to lose your memory, little by little.

Noe uses the split-screen technique throughout the film, enabling us to watch two characters who are in different places at the same time. It shows how two people struggling with the ageing process and illness can become out of sync.

With a slew of controversial works behind him, from "I Stand Alone" to "Irreversible" and "Love," Argentinian filmmaker Noe has gained a reputation for heavy use of violence and sex.

Noe appears to have calmed down, with his latest film among the most personal he has made yet.

The director took inspiration from his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This is the first time Noe has filmed octogenarians and he worked with a powerful, unusual duo.

The film's stars are actor and post-New Wave icon Françoise Lebrun ("The Mother and the Whore") and Italian filmmaker Dario Argento ("Suspiria"). The director, instrumental in shaping the Italian thriller subgenre giallo, is acting for the first time.

Meanwhile, Alex Lutz ("Guy") plays the couple's only son, who is addicted to drugs.

Senility is no longer a rare theme in cinema, with award-winning film "The Father" by Florian Zeller, starring Anthony Hopkins, much talked about recently.

But Noe takes his own approach to the issue. As ever, his script is only a few pages long and almost all the dialogues are improvised.

He has created a moving film that draws its power from the realism of the situations he conveys.