Words: Paul Dean
'Enter The Void' (UK Release: 24 September)
Director: Gaspar Noé
Cast: Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, Cyril Roy
Gaspar Noé's
'Enter The Void' is the most horrible film I have ever seen. My assessment isn't that it is badly made, technically incompetent or cheap. It's evident that it is very finely, very precisely crafted. It is a detailed and very deliberate work, even boasting some suitably organic and attractive visual effects.
Unfortunately, none of these attributes prevent it from often being a thoroughly horrid cinematic experience. The most positive comment I can make about
'Enter The Void' is that its very best moments are merely mildly engaging. Otherwise, it's alternately boring or bullying its viewers. When it's boring, it's dull as can be. The rest of the time it's busy being a horrid, excessive and sustained assault on both your senses and your sanity. Let me try to explain how this film made me feel both physically and mentally unwell.
'Enter The Void' is about a brother and sister tightly bonded by the tragedies they have endured. They move to Japan in an attempt to fulfil a childhood dream, but to make ends meet the brother finds himself trading drugs and the sister becomes an exotic dancer. Then, the brother is shot and his dying mind hallucinates its way through the past, present and future. Much of this is shot from the brother's point of view, using a first-person perspective and internal narration. At other times it features Noé's characteristic giddying crane work and gliding, spinning transitions which have the camera flying over buildings, passing through walls and, at one point, flying up the sister’s vagina.
(13 September)
(from 2008) was one of my favorite albums of the 21st century's first decade. I think that 'Wilderness Heart', their third album, is even better.
