Well, it was everything I expected it to be and maybe even more... or less. I am not sure. It was back in September when I saw it for the first time on the big screen. Its still lingering in my mind. I can't help think about it, films like ENTER THE VOID get stuck, they get permanently imprinted onto the viewer's psyche like some sort of a haunting image, or a vivid out-of-body experience.
"Enter The Void" marks the third feature from Noe, and his first in English. This is his follow up to the 2002 rape-revenge shocker "Irreversible", albeit not directly related to or connected to it, "Enter The Void" carries the unmistakable Gaspar Noe stamp of filmmaking. However, I would say that this film is more thematically in-line with Noe's 1998 tour-de-force debut "Seul Contre Tous" or as it is known in the English speaking world - "I Stand Alone", which featured a brilliant and intense performance by legendary French actor Phillipe Nahon. "Enter The Void" took nearly 7 years to make, 1 and 1/2 of those spent in post-production due to the ground-breaking visual effects required to translate Noe's vision to the screen.
The film follows Oscar, a small-time drug dealing teenager, or rather his dead spirit, as he wonders through the neon glitzy streets of downtown Tokyo in search of his stripper sister. In a nutshell that's pretty much it, at least plot-wise. As expected from a Gaspar Noe picture, just as his previous two films who followed rather simplified plots, near stream of consciousness morality onslaughts, in my opinion directly attacking bourgeois moral values and social norms. Just as "Irreversible" delivered on a heightened, if not nearly nauseating, visceral emotions, with ETV, Noe delivers a hauntingly demented visual experience hitting hard like a ten-ton hammer. Despite its apparent flaws in the script department, the thinly developed characters, the unnecessary three hour running time, the so-called French New Wave Extreme auteur-provocateur Gaspar Noe delivers on a purely psychological and visceral level. If "Avatar" is the visual pinnacle for mainstream movie audiences, then "Enter The Void" is definitely the "beat" generation's Avatar. The film employs rather unusual techniques, which include POV blinking (the film is presented almost exclusively from Oscar's spirit POV) and perspective shifting aerial overhead shots. As admitted by Gaspar Noe himself at the Q&A following the film at the Curzon Soho, London premier in September, films like Robert Montgomery's noir classic "Lady in the Lake" (1947) and Mikhail Kalatozov's 1968 film "I am Cuba", both of which featured extensive protagonist POV photography, were cited as inspirations for the visual style of the film.
From the insanely choreographed hovering crane shots, to the stunning use of strobe lighting, natural and practical and existing street lights, the usual Noe-stamped super grainy 16mm photography, mind-boggling musical landscape mixing classical pieces with pounding electro beats, tilt-shift and miniature shots of the Tokyo skyline, to the absolutely demented brain damage inducing title sequence, Enter the Void remains the most visual experience of 2010 and quite possibly Noe's masterpiece.
"Enter the Void" is coming soon to Blu-ray and DVD this April.
