Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009)

[Brian C]

When I saw it, there was little audience reaction whatsoever that I noticed. So clearly, the director intended the film to be boring.

[mfunk9786]

U.S. release is slightly less vaguely announced. Not looking good that this will have both cuts of the film. The French release does, but it has hardcoded French subs. I cannot win.

[tenia]

The French release does, but it has hardcoded French subs.

Forced subs, not hard coded. And I'm pretty sure it's removable on some players.

[Tom Hagen]

Special features include:
. . .
DMT

Sweet!

[Nothing]

The extras look the same as the French disc. Really, there's no reason to cut the film down for video release; the shorter version was simply about making the film more schedule-friendly for theatrical exhibitors. Would be v odd if only the shorter version is included*.

Having said this, I think an 80m cut would be far more creatively effective (taking out most of the middle of the film). The lameness of the characterisation, performances and plot, and the repetitive nature of the film's formal approach, would become far less of an issue.

*edit; yes, the longer cut is c.160m....

[Oedipax]

I thought the long version was 160 and change. If the U.S. release is cut down, it looks like I'm going to either have to import the French BD or hope the UK release gets it right.

[Alan Smithee]

Having said this, I think an 80m cut would be far more creatively effective (taking out most of the middle of the film). The lameness of the characterisation, performances and plot, and the repetitive nature of the film's formal approach, would become far less of an issue.

I want to agree with you. I would actually love to see both released on dvd. One 80-90 minute cut that just gets to the point and one full length cut. However I think the lame characterization and performances would be more apparent in a shorter version.

I think this will be a film on blu-ray that I don't necessarily watch all the way through in one sitting and even if he's not entirely successful, Noe is attempting to establish rhythms in a feature film that we haven't seen. I think it's a shame that the performances can be bad but in its long form they only make up a fraction of the film. I will say that the only people that I thought were bad were the two main characters, and I thought the scenes from their childhood were actually really powerful, they reminded me of The Mirror a little bit(I know that's blasphemy). It's just divisive all around. My girlfriend thought the love motel scene went on for too long but I wouldn't cut a frame. I would get rid of most of the scene of Paz de la Huerta fucking her boss, I think Noe would say it's an important build up to her receiving the phone call. It's a wonky mess of a movie that's too repetitive but I pretty much loved it. And even though I would get taken out of the film by the bad acting I still felt as many critics have said like it happened to me when it was over.

[mfunk9786]

The U.S. BD/DVD release has been confirmed to be the 161 minute cut! \:D/

[mfunk9786]

The U.S. Blu-ray release is indefinitely delayed. Amazon is saying 1-4 weeks, no word from MPI, as usual.

And yes, today was supposed to be the release date. #-o

[oldsheperd]

Dang! Is it worth it to wait for the BD or would the SD suffice?

[mfunk9786]

It's always worth it to get the BD.

[oldsheperd]

DVDtalk on the SD. Sounds like some image problems but they chalk them up more to the film itself:

IFC Films releases Enter the Void on DVD with an erratic 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, the major issues in which can likely can attributed to the source material. Sharpness, detail and texture all vary considerably throughout the film depending on the shot. Noé's chaotic filmmaking style, which encompasses uneven and often non-existent key lighting, and his use of several film formats do not lend themselves to an especially attractive presentation, and some scenes look little better than a home movie. I noticed a lot of artifacts, some reminiscent of the combing effects you get with an interlaced transfer, though I do not believe that to be the case. There's also haloing, splotchy black levels, and blown-out contrast. The movie is nothing if not colorful, and the transfer handles the bold, chaotic and often bleeding colors appropriately. This is often an ugly transfer, but I would sooner blame the filmmakers than the DVD.

[mfunk9786]

The BD will look better, trust me. A 161 minute film with extras on a DVD and the low Bitrate necessary for that is what's causing the artifacts and black level issues.

[James]

I visited two stores and then called two others (including Ameoba), plus Amazon lists it as "shipping in 1-4 weeks". The Blu-ray is nowhere to be found.

[mfunk9786]

My Amazon order now says "Shipping Soon"! \:D/

[James]

My Amazon order now says "Shipping Soon"! \:D/

According to DVDTalk, MFI never shipped out the Blu-ray and will in the next week. Perhaps that's just for a particular part of the country, but I wouldn't get too excited just yet.

[mfunk9786]

Well, it just shipped, so... I'm good.

[Nothing]

some scenes look little better than a home movie... This is often an ugly transfer, but I would sooner blame the filmmakers.

Whilst I don't like the movie, this quote (and DVD?) does it a massive disservice.

[oldsheperd]

Blu Ray is finally listed as in stock on Amazon.

[mfunk9786]

Got (and watched) mine today, it looks great! Though compared to the French release, the menus are sort of restrained.

[James]

Nice. Started watching this again on Netflix last night and it's just as visually invigorating and transporting as I remember and definitely surpasses Dogtooth as my favorite of 2010 — I'm gonna have to wait until I pick up the director's cut Blu-ray before I get too obsessed and watch any more though.

[swo17]

So against my better judgment I watched this movie today (though I use the term "movie" loosely, as Enter the Void has much less in common with movies than, say, a colonoscopy). If at any point you see a hole or orifice in the frame, you can bet that Noé will eventually get around to putting his camera through it. There was even a point partway through where I facetiously said to myself: "What next--going right into Paz de la Huerta's vagina?"

Spoiler

Of course this happens.

Otherwise, the movie goes on and on (and on) about how much life sucks for drug dealers and strippers, who presumably are forced into these lives because when they were young their parents died (because life sucks). You know, life does suck from time to time, but sometimes when life gives you lemons, you just have to eject the disc from your Blu-ray player, put it back in the mail, and get on with your life.

[accatone]

I do not understand the whole fuss about this film. Saw this on saturday and found it rather boring. The visual effects are somewhere between The 5th Element (birds eye) and Tron (colors). The "story" or "concept" behind this is as enlightening as say "Inception" (another movie i watched some weeks ago in search of an entertaining "new/recent" film - which i unfortunatly also found very boring). I did not find anything disturbing in this film, abortions and drug-abuse have been worked out far more interesting and even more provocative as in this Cinema du Look piece. It was not even Cool!
The quite consequent "behind the shoulder" camera perspective of the main character was the only thing that i found a little interesting* - as for the rest i think the director is better off with a VJ-Job in a (not too cool!) club.

*and the Bonus with Harmony Korine.

[Roger Ryan]

I was surprised that this turned out to be the least interesting of Noe's features for me. The actors are never able to give the paper-thin characters any resonance, as Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel were able to do with IRREVERSIBLE, and the whole "I'll stay with you forever" motivation is embarrassingly sentimental. I found the film less homophobic than his earlier work (which, I admit, isn't saying much). After the friend's dialogue sets up the drug dealer as the ultimate badass, it's quite underwhelming that the dealer's actual characterization is so bland. With little else going for it, Noe's attempts to shock the audience are merely ridiculous; given how the story ends, the abortion scene is completely unnecessary and illogical.

With both IRREVERSIBLE and I STAND ALONE, I didn't necessarily like what Noe put on the screen, but they affected me and I could not stop thinking about either for days after. ENTER THE VOID did nothing to involve me. The pretty psychedelic effects were nicely done as was the aerial camerawork, but the title is very apt; there's nothing going on here worth remembering.

[colinr0380]

Wow, um...that was certainly a Gaspar Noé film alright. I don't think I've been as fundamentally creeped out and left so utterly depressed at the state of the world by a film for a long time as I was by Enter The Void. Irreversible and Seul Contre Tous troubled me a lot but this one just left me with a sense of pointless futility. The adolescent point of view of the world is bizzarely the thing that makes the film easier to watch (and sometimes to be amused by in its crass, blunderingly obvious way of pushing its 'metaphors' into the audience's face over and over again), and yet more despairing and creepier in the idea that the life of an (albeit fictional) character can be reduced to such emptiness while still pretending to carry some sort of profoundity or insight into 'The Human Condition'.

I can admire the attempt to sum up a life which tackling a 'life flashing before your eyes' subject necessitates, but there is always that problem that in attempting to cover the span of a lifetime that supposedly significant events are coarsened into a few cliched moments (picnics on the grass with loved ones; laughing and spinning around in your true love's arms on a beautiful summer day; playing on the beach; running around through the garden of your family home as a child; enjoying a themepark ride or two, etc). Enter The Void never avoids these cliches, and without even the excuse of brevity necessitating such shorthand imagery instead jumps wholeheartedly into almost every one of these 'Kodak moments' and wallows around in them for all they're worth. This happens in the immediate post-death section of the film as we run through Oscar's entire life for the next hour.

One of the things that I find depressing about the film, though I'm not sure if it was intended to be so, is that in running through this section encapsulating the main character's entire life, it also reveals just how shallow and empty Oscar's life actually was. Whether this is just a fault of the film dealing with youthful characters with limited (and childish projections onto) life experiences, or whether it is a coarsening necessitated by having to be able to deal with an entire life in a relatively short amount of time, it feels as if by encapsulating the character in total it makes Oscar less of an interesting and pitiable figure.

It seems that Oscar simply lost his parents in a tragic accident, moved to Japan, got involved with drugs, brought his nubile child-woman sister over with his drug money, got jealous of her and then stupidly thought that he would meet his old drug client after sleeping with his mother (and knowing that Victor himself knew about their liaisons, and subtly showed he was not particularly happy about it by breaking a bottle over Oscar's head) without realising he was likely to be handed over to the police. I don't think we are talking about the tragic loss of a character who had great potential here! However I certainly don't think that all characters need to be worthy to be worth empathy. But there needs to be a little more meat on the character to inspire a connection than just a detailed investigation into his monotonous drug rounds and a creepy incest/possession thing going on with his sister (even the Scarface remake, which boils down to the same two things, had a compelling central performance and an interesting take on the emptiness of capitalist aspirations). Irreversible works better (and is more troubling for that reason) due to the charismatic performances by Bellucci and Cassel who help to power over the lack of characterisation with their personas. Seul Contre Tous had that amazing performance by Philippe Nahon as an absolutely repulsive, yet also pitiable and in some disturbing way relatable in his ranting xenophobic, misogynistic, nihilistic, character. Enter The Void has almost nothing in the way of relatable, charismatic characters.

In that sense it reminds me of a video game in the way that the moment-to-moment experiential is privileged over any actual relatable characters who develop over the course of the film. It seems that you're not meant to sit back and have your own reaction to events occurring between the characters on the screen but you are instead meant to become the character, which is something that strangely results in a far more reductive experience. This is something which works to some extent in video games where you at least have some measure of control over what your avatar does (albeit very limited and constrained to a linear narrative, even in most 'open world' games), and therefore can feel validated to some extent in placing your emotions onto the actions. But in Enter The Void it is impossible to know what Oscar is thinking about what he is experiencing, which makes it impossible to empathise with him. The character can have no effect on the action, and has no particular goal to fulfil - something which which contributes the essential feeling of futility to the film.

I was left thinking that 'The Void' is not death but the emptiness and pointlessness of existence - each person fundamentally alone with nothing to do but fuck and get high, prostitute yourself and wait for the pain of losing those close to you until you disappear without a trace yourself.

This idea is complicated/made laugh out loud funny(/incredibly creepy) in the film by the incest stuff between Oscar and Linda (which makes Cocteau's Les enfants terribles seem casual and understated! I wonder if it was an influence?), which got a little obvious in the idea that the first thing Oscar does following his death is to zoom over to Linda and jump inside the body of the guy she is screwing - to get a vicarious ghostly thrill? Does it still count as incest if you are doing it post-death? (This actually reminds me of a short film from the late 80s called The Afterlife of Grandpa in which an elderly ghostly gentleman appears to his grandson, who is excitedly preparing to lose his virginity to his girlfriend that night, and variously begs/cajoles/threatens/guilts him into giving up his virginity so his grandpa can possess his body and have one last thrillride before he goes off into the next world. It was meant to be a lighthearted comedy but the theme was incredibly creepy and icky there too). There was also that slightly comic moment when I had the worrying feeling that Oscar's soul was going to enter, and be reincarnated as, the stripper pole in the club that Linda regularly entwines herself around.

It then reaches gobsmacking proportions in the final Love Hotel sequence when it becomes clear that Oscar has been seeing his sister and his best friend as his potential new mother and father, which suggests that he really needed a wider circle of acquaintances to draw mother and father figures from! It also suggests a nasty strain of xenophobia in the way that, after saying that if the Japanese club boss Mario who Linda is seeing throughout the film gets her pregnant he will kill the baby, we see him enter Mario presumably at the point at which the baby was conceived, follow Linda having the abortion and leaving Mario, and then shacking up immediately with Oscar's white, French best friend (the chap who introduced both Oscar and Linda to drugs and had been wandering the streets since Oscar's death eating from the rubbish, so who was obviously better father material!), whose baby she then goes on to have (If I were Oscar, following all those events, and being aware of the previous abortion, I would have hesitated at least momentarily before jumping into Linda's womb to take the place of the previous foetus! What if Linda changed her mind again and didn't want the next baby either? C'est la vie, I suppose)

I was left with the inherent horror of the film as not being death but being reborn again as a new, hopeful being. Very anti-Buddhist in that sense! Though I suppose it makes sense that instead of 'moving on to a higher plane of existence' that Oscar gets (willingly) trapped in the reincarnation cycle. It seems basically about the lengths a person will go to in order to have the brief chance to suck on breasts guilt free again, and if that person is your sister or your mother or (to paraphrase Chinatown) your sister/mother, then that is all for the better! With that sense of happiness immediately severed by the cutting of the umbilical cord and getting shoved into a plastic container! Serves Oscar right, is all I can say!

Despite being less than impressed with the actual content of the film, the style of it is often amazing, though swo's point is well taken about the number of orifices or holes in the film that the camera goes through which, though initially amusing, gets rather repetitive and samey after a while. The third section of the film, which follows Oscar presumably watching the events that occur following his death is just a whole string of short scenes punctuated by plunging over and over into light fittings or down drains, which gets quite wearing after a while, and often I couldn't concentrate (and felt the film itself wasn't concentrating either) on the scene at hand but was more fixated on finding the next object it was going to plunge into, which seemed to be missing the point of the scene (stylistics over concentrating on the actual dramatic content of the scene at hand). Though I did like the idea that we were seeing all of the dirt and grime, the traintracks and roads, the frameworks of buildings and tiny alleys getting delineated as we zoomed to one location and back again - sort of the backstage area normally hidden behind the guady, ostentatious facades.

I thought the first half of the film was the best, though this might be because I was still relatively alert and had not yet been bludgeoned over and over by facile points made in a heavy handed manner (an obvious characteristic of a Noé film at this point) and liked the shift from the first person experiential sequence filmed Irreversible-style in a manner to suggest one continuous take into the post-death behind-the-head point of view for the 'life flashing before Oscar's eyes' sequence. This allowed Noé to be able to use editing again to depict Oscar's slipping between fractured memories and making rather too literal and obvious connections between subjects. It also thrusts Oscar from being the character we are living through to himself being placed in the same position as the audience in watching his past life at a remove - this is something I wish that Noé had done more with but unfortunately, due to the charisma void of our main character (presumably to create a kind of everyman figure? Though that would be a troublesome notion in itself, given that he is a kind of dumb, drugged-out protagonist from the small amount we see of him) it is difficult to feel any kind of connection to what he is feeling. Apart from the drug trip early in the film it is very difficult to really understand the main character and what he is feeling about re-watching his past life, what these events actually mean to him, and whether he actually goes through anything particularly cathartic or enlightening through re-experiencing them. Instead he seems more of a blank - a void at the centre of the film, which is a fundamental flaw for the character being the one we have to connect with, and who has to have actually meant something for the other characters in the film.

I was also struck whilst watching that this has a lot of sequences from Irreversible, just repurposed and on a grander scale. For example the scene immediately post-death where the camera is floating over the aftermath, seeing Victor dragged out screaming and the French best friend running off is similar to Marcus and Pierre being dragged out of the Rectum and into the ambulances at the beginning (end) of that film. Which itself suggests that the Book of the Dead philosophical conversation between Oscar and his French friend on the walk to the club just preceding that moment is equivalent to the opening scene of Irreversible of Philippe Nahon's butcher in the hotel room overlooking the club, himself philosophising about the world. The scene of Linda and Mario in the dressing room of the club having sex followed by her picking up her mobile and learning of Oscar's death seems the equivalent of the Irreversible rape scene - here the sex is not violent but there is that threat hanging over the entire scene that Linda's life is going to totally change once she picks up the phone. The swirling camera scene where Linda is found by a child unconscious on a playground with a handful of pills seems an ironic callback to Bellucci's final 'epitome of womanhood' scene of Irreversible where she seems idyllically happy, and nascently pregnant.

And the Love Hotel scene feels like this film's 'Heavenly' equivalent of Irreversible's 'Hellish' Rectum club - lots of couples copulating in various positions and expelling lots of multi-coloured pheromones around the place. The big changes here are that the Love Hotel comes at the end (I was going to say climax!) of the film while the Rectum opens Irreversible (if only because the narrative was reordered that way); and that the Love Hotel is almost exclusively heterosexual. I say 'almost' because we get the shot of Oscar's betrayer, Victor, down on his knees fellating a couple of Japanese businessmen in the lift, something which combines the homosexual panic and xenophobic fears together into one neat package (it also I suppose fits in with the Love Hotel being a happy place where wrongs are righted, though Victor actually seems quite unfairly put upon throughout the film - one of the more naively innocent characters, with a classical sense of right and wrong, who gets most thoroughly corrupted with almost a De Sadean sense of pleasure by the filmmakers).

One other question I had about this film was whether Noé was referencing Chris Marker in some sequences involving the Japanese friend of the French artist who has built the model city, which comes to psychedelic life in the Love Hotel sequence. I wonder if this was a call back to that scene in Sans Soleil where we are introduced to the guy who was 'reconfiguring reality' by playing it through his computer and adding lots of video effects to it. The narration in Sans Soleil says "he calls it the Zone - a homage to Tarkovsky". Since Noé's production company is Les Cinémas de la Zone, maybe he intended to make his own homage?

So - deeply flawed, incredibly frustrating, often emptily pretentious, dazzingly beautiful and painfully audacious. Quintessential Gaspar Noé. I'd just like better characters (or less superficial characterisation, or if not that then at least a shorter film) next time!