I only know writer/director Gaspar Noé from his 2002 film Irreversible, which got a lot of attention at the time for it's unusual structure and the very, very violent rape scene with Monica Bellucci. I guess I was prepared for Enter the Void to be a difficult film, but I could have never expected what I got. Watching this film is a totally arduous experience. Noé uses bright, flashing lights and odd focus tricks, unusual moving cameras, sudden and loud noises and some of the most direct sexual and violent material I have seen in recent years. Beneath these elements, the film is rather dull as the underlying story is banal and difficult to connect with.
The basic story is of American loser and waistoid Oscar who lives in Tokyo for some amount of time. At a certain point he begins to deal drugs in the expat clubbing community. His younger sister Linda visits him and falls in with a Japanese pimp. Ultimately when a drug deal goes bad, Oscar is killed by the Japanese vice squad. From there we see backwards, how Oscar got to that point, and forwards, about what his sister does after his death.
The main focus of the film is the unusual points-of-view of each of the three acts. The first act (about Oscar dealing drugs and getting iced) is interestingly shown from his subjective point-of-view - as if we were looking out of his eyes and hearing in voice over his internal thoughts. There are some clever camera tricks use here (like when he looks in a mirror at one point). When Oscar takes some drugs, we go into his brain to see what he is "seeing" internally - which is basically some trippy psychedelic stuff reminiscent of the third act of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mostly this is showy and annoying (it's basically a long hand-held camera shot with some Windows 95 screen-saver computer animation in the middle).
The second act is told from behind Oscar's head (sorta like the shots of Olivier Gourmet in the Dardenne Brothers' Le Fils). We are following Oscar as he goes about doing and dealing drugs and fucking all sorts of whores and girlfriends (heckuva life, buddy).
The last act seems to be from the point-of-view of Oscar's spirit or soul (ugh, even writing that makes me sorta sick). Everything is shot from above with a very "floaty" camera. We go through walls and fly around the city from one sinful location to another seeing what Linda after he's gone. Not to ruin anything, but we get to go into Linda's vagina as she's having sex and see her male partner's penis pushing toward us and ejaculating. Uh. I don't know what to say about this, other than it's totally unnecessary and pretty fucking dumb.
But that's really the whole movie. Oscar and Linda are really boring characters who are never sober and have nothing to say of any interest (there's a back story that they were orphaned when they were young when their folks died in a bad car accident). Their expat friends are lowlifes. The drug stuff is boring and only style with no substance.
I got rather motion sick watching this, with all the moving cameras and drug-addled views of the world. There is a recurring thing where Oscar remembers the car accident that killed his parents - which means that at just about any moment there could be a tremendously loud and sudden car crash into the middle of the screen (just in case we were getting comfortable in our seats as we're getting jizzed on by gigantic cocks). The script structure is just as showy and unnecessary as the drug visions and camera work. Big deal that it's not linear. That makes it annoying, not interesting. I guess I give Noé credit for being brave enough to do what he wanted to do - I just didn't particularly like it.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
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