Film: Enter The Void
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Studio: E1
Certificate: 18
Running time: 160 mins
Director: Gaspar Noe
Starring: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander, Masato Tanno
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: France/Italy/Germany
Language: English/Japanese
Review by: Rob Markham
Gaspar Noé is not known for subtlety and he is certainly one of the most fearless filmmakers working today. Considering the scale and scope of the beauty, ugliness, shocking violence, and mesmerising camerawork seen in both his feature and short films so far, it begs the question, where else will this director dare to go?
In his Tokyo apartment, Oscar gets high and hallucinates before receiving a phone call from Victor, who asks him to deliver drugs to a bar called The Void. Along with his friend, Alex, Oscar delivers the drugs only to find he has been set up and the police raid the bar. Oscar is shot and killed in the bathroom.
Oscar’s spirit rises from his body and embarks on a journey that sees him visit his past where he relives tragedy, the present and the circumstances that led to his death, and visits his friends and family as they cope with loss and the aftermath of the shooting.
We follow Oscar’s journey and experience with him love, loss, betrayal, birth and death, until he ends up back at the very beginning…
Noé himself has described Enter The Void as a psychedelic melodrama, which is apt, yet this is a film that really does transcend whatever expectations an audience might have based on that description. Noé has created a dense piece that combines his own style with that of others, most notably Kubrick.
Noé leaves us in no doubt that we are truly an inhabitant in the body of Oscar. We follow the living Oscar through his eyes to such an extent that we are even subjected to his blinking. It is a strange experience at first, but the commitment to this particular style is so bold that we soon find ourselves caught up in Oscar’s mind. His hallucinations, while on drugs, are beautifully realised and as close to hypnotic as you are likely to find on film.
It is through this style that Noé is able to convincingly tell us the story of Oscar’s disembodied spirit. For those familiar with Noé’s films, the camerawork used once Oscar is dead and floating over Tokyo will be instantly recognisable. Whilst in Irreversible, and to some degree in Noé’s short film We F**k Alone, the camera was used to disorient the viewer, here it serves a very different purpose. We become the spirit of Oscar and the camera demonstrates the freedom of the spirit, whilst at the same time being almost painfully restrained to the neon cityscape and bound to his sister, Linda.
It is a bold move, and one that could easily turn an audience off, but the calm pace and leisurely pans and swoops make for a rich viewing experience when juxtaposed with the events being witnessed.
These events are, in true Gaspar Noé style, unflinching and daring. There will be lots of talk surrounding such scenes as an ejaculation seen from inside a vagina and a close up of an aborted foetus, but to focus on the ugliness of such crude images would be to forget their place in the overall picture. As a whole, the film shows us life, and the horrors faced by those living in the aftermath of a loss. Such images as the two siblings promising to never leave each other while sitting in an idyllic field contrast with the ugliness, just as the Linda’s intense grief contrasts with the nonplussed expression of her boyfriend. Focusing on a group of foreigners in Tokyo serves to highlight a sense of alienation, but also adds to our involvement, feeling like outsiders ourselves as we swoop over rooftops and barrel along alleyways.
The star of this particular show is Tokyo itself. It’s not a Tokyo that is recognisable, painted as it is in garish neon. Noé decides not to show us the usual markers of busy high streets, prosperous businesses and mirror-like skyscrapers, opting instead for grimy alleys, cramped apartments and strip joints. When we do see a stereotypical Japanese businessman, he is lying on a stage while strippers pamper him. This is not a Tokyo that has been seen anywhere else in cinema, and our submersion in it is wholly dependent on the mise-en-scène working in partnership with the directing style. To Noé’s credit, it works.
The film is let down slightly by the performances. With the exception of Paz de la Huerta, the acting never really convinces throughout. The film is also too long. While this is a symptom of the first-person style, once the constraints of being alive are removed, the pace could have picked up a times. The lack of identifiable or likeable characters also works to its detriment.
These complaints aside, this is a film so rich in imagery, themes, morals (albeit none too subtle) and ideas, that watching it once is not going to be enough. There are too few filmmakers brave enough to attempt projects as ambitious as this. There may be accusations of Noé’s self-indulgence getting in the way of telling a concise story, but as an auteur, he should be praised for pushing the boundaries and testing both what he is able and what he is allowed to do.
Enter The Void has rightly received mixed reviews from critics all over the world. It is a film that will not appeal to everyone, and will probably be loved and loathed in equal measure, though to deny the ingenuity of the director would be a mistake. It is the kind of film that will most likely be viewed again in a few decades time and held up as a masterpiece of cinematic bravado.
The going may be hard, but Enter The Void should be seen by all those who love cinema, if only for the sheer outrageousness of Noé’s ambition and vision. It is, by turns, rich, daring, beautiful and horrific. It is films such as this that are the reason world cinema is so exciting. You may not like this film, but you won’t forget it. RM
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