I was very excited about watching the new Gaspar Noe film after being amazed and astounded by ‘Irreversible’ while studying Film at college. ‘Enter the Void’ is not as gripping as ‘Irreversible’ but is a fascinating film. We follow the life and death of Oscar, an American drug-dealer in Japan. The camera becomes his point of view through a strobe effect, neon city, with his sister often the subject of his gaze. Noe’s camera lingers on things for far too long, allowing the viewer to contemplate the meaning and actually think, maybe a little too much, about what is going on. It forces the viewer to watch the film in a completely different way, never becoming absorbed in the film viewing experience but rather thinking about the experience as a whole. Experience is a suitable word to sum up this film and its existential themes.
Perhaps a little too long and over indulgent, it is an interesting film with great acting from unknown Nathaniel Brown to the more familiar face and body of Paz de la Huerta (Boardwalk Empire), who is excellent at playing drawling, overtly sexual characters who have a troubled childhood. The story is presented to us in a similar fashion to ‘Irreversible’ whereby the main event, or disequilibrium, takes place towards the beginning of the film and then the story goes back to explain the proceedings leading up to it. Piece by piece we begin to understand the lives of this brother and sister and their intimate relationship and we observe the cyclical nature of life. The style and editing of the film is Noe at his best and most controversial with an extreme panning shot of an aborted foetus and an inner vaginal shot, both completely unnecessary and shocking.
Apparently there are several different edits of this film and, as I saw the version that is nearly 3 hours long, I would be interested to see what had been edited in the slightly shorter versions. The epic length does detract from the originality and brilliance of the film and with such long takes it becomes more of an endurance test than anything else.
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