Enter the Void (2009)

An American drug dealer living in Tokyo is betrayed by his best friend and killed in a drug deal gone bad. His soul, observing the repercussions of his death, seeks resurrection.

Director:

Gaspar Noé

Writers:

Gaspar Noé, Lucile Hadzihalilovic (with the help of)

Stars:

Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, Cyril Roy

3 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Paz de la Huerta	...	Linda
Nathaniel Brown	...	Oscar
Cyril Roy	...	Alex
Olly Alexander	...	Victor
Masato Tanno	...	Mario
Ed Spear	...	Bruno
Emily Alyn Lind	...	Little Linda
Jesse Kuhn	...	Little Oscar
Nobu Imai	...	Tito
Sakiko Fukuhara	...	Saki
Janice Béliveau-Sicotte	...	Mother (as Janice Sicotte-Béliveau)
Sara Stockbridge	...	Suzy (as Sarah Stockbridge)
Stuart Miller	...	Victor's Father
Emi Takeuchi	...	Carol (as Yemi)
Rumiko Kimishima	...	Rumi

Storyline

Tokyo's nasty underside, seen primarily through the eyes of Oscar, a heavy drug user, whose sister Linda is a stripper. Oscar also has flashbacks to his childhood when trauma upends the siblings. Oscar's drug-fed hallucinations alter Tokyo's already-disconcerting nights, and after the police shoot him, he can float above and look down: on his sister's sorrow, on the rooms of a love hotel, and on life at even a molecular level. The spectrum's colors can be beautiful; it's people's colorless lives that can be ugly. And what of afterlife, is there more than a void?

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Plot Keywords:

drugs | hallucination | afterlife | night | love hotel | 

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Genres:

Drama | Fantasy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

IFC Films [us] Official site [fr]

Country:

France Germany Italy Canada

Language:

English Japanese

Release Date:

5 May 2010 (France)

Also Known As:

Soudain le vide

Filming Locations:

Montréal, Québec, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

€13,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$43,651 (USA) (24 September 2010)

Gross:

$336,467 (USA) (24 December 2010)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fidélité Films, Wild Bunch, BUF

Technical Specs

Runtime:

161 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Gaspar Noé planned Enter the Void over a period of 15 years - before his short film Carne. He was around 23 years old, when he saw Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake on drugs. The film is shot in subjective camera, entirely from the point of view of the main character. For Enter the Void, Noé uses a subjective camera in the same manner. The main character Oscar is seen just once while the character is alive (in a mirror.)

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Goofs

During the first sequence in the "Sex, Money, Power" strip club, the camera and jib/crane are visible in the reflection of the platform the dancers are on.

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Quotes

Bruno: Baby, you like snakes?

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Crazy Credits

At the Cannes Film Festival the film was screened without any opening or closing credits, the film began with "ENTER" and ended with "THE VOID".

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Connections

Referenced in O Cão (2010)

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Soundtracks

"Filmy feedback"
Performed by Toshiya Tsunoda

User Reviews

Crazy, but technically brilliant!

In a nutshell, Gaspar Noe's often exasperating but always visionary Enter the Void follows a man on his journey from his last hours on earth, through his death and his journey into the afterlife. The first twenty minutes or so follows Oscar as he takes a hit of DMT (a very potent hallucinogen) and goes on a visually arresting, if slightly over-long trip. He then leaves his house to give his friend a stash of drugs he owes him only to be chased and shot by police when he gets there. From there, his death and afterlife mirrors the philosophies behind the Tibetan Book of the Dead which theorises (I'm sure I'm putting this very crudely) that one's soul floats around, watching the world without them until they figure out how to leave their old life behind and move on. To recommend this film to audiences is perhaps a wrong turn, as it is bound to strike most as indulgent, immoral, needlessly vulgar and uncomfortable (particularly in Oscar's tendency to watch his sister having sex whenever possible). However, with suitably forewarning, this is a film that any self-respecting cinephile should make a point of seeing, and especially on the big screen.

Noe proved with Irreversible that he was a technical genius and that his eye for original visuals knows no bounds. He also proved that he wasn't afraid to shock his audience and has quite the nasty streak running through his stories. In both visual content and shock factor, Irreversible was merely a precursor to his magnum opus Enter the Void. With an endless stream of nasty images and depressingly dead-eyed unpleasantness, it is difficult to feel anything for any of the characters, but none of this dampens the impact of Noe's probing, soaring, spectral camera as it floats in and out of lives and deaths. I don't know if it has ever been done before but the camera-as-spirit conceit is highly effective and one which puts a very interesting moral spin on the voyeurism of this film. Noe takes voyeurism to extreme, as Oscar's spirit jumps in and out of bodies in often very unusual and even shocking circumstances.

The trouble with Enter the Void is that it is difficult sometimes to know whether to laugh or be shocked. Some of the content is pretty outrageous and even quite silly. However, for every roll of the eyes, there is a gasp of astonishment in terms of the intensity of the cinematic experience. Having now seen this film twice (it premiered at JDIFF 2010 in February), I must say I was pleased to see some superfluous scenes towards the end cut out, giving the film a somewhat more streamlined effect.

Your tolerance for Noe's self-indulgence will most likely decide your level of enjoyment of this, a film I imagine will very much divide audiences, but it is at the very least a visual milestone that should be seen on as big a screen as possible (though somehow I can't see this one gracing Screen 1 in the Savoy anytime soon). A flawed piece, but one flooded with moments of genius.