Enter the Void DVD

A bold, graphic, hallucinatory trip through a man's mind before and after his death. Gaspar Noé might be just the new type of filmmaker that cinema needs, says Alex Davidson

Kicking off with the most exhilarating and innovative credits scene since the era of Saul Bass, a film like Enter the Void has never been seen in cinema before. Nothing can prepare the audience for the visual miracle Gaspar Noé has produced, an assault on the senses that will leave the viewer gasping.

Oscar (newcomer Nathaniel Brown) is a small-time drug dealer living in Tokyo, who watches over his sister (Broadwalk Empire’s Paz de la Huerta), a stripper - both were orphaned when their parents died in a car crash, with the children in the backseat. When Oscar is betrayed by one of his clients and is shot dead by police at a club called ‘The Void’, he fulfils a promise never to leave his sister as his spirit leaves his body and witnesses the lives of those close to him; the camera observes the action through his eyes throughout, drifting occasionally back into the past before returning to the present.

Enter the Void purposefully evokes the sensations of a drug trip, quite literally in the film’s opening scene, in which a hit from a crack pipe triggers off an incredible, extended visual display of merging, beautiful patterns, the most striking hallucinatory scene since 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the narrative unfolds after Oscar’s death the visions become more disturbing and weird - the death of his parents is recalled repeatedly, while an unforgettable tracking shot shows the action in a brothel, as sex workers and clients rut in increasingly bizarre tableaux, a mesmerising glow emitting from their intercourse.

Noé’s previous film, Irréversible, remains one of the most controversial features in recent memory, infamous for its horrific violence, including a lengthy rape scene. While Enter the Void does not feature such stomach-churning scenes of carnage, the film is not for the faint-hearted, with graphic sex scenes, hard drug use and disturbing sequences, including a bloody car crash and an abortion. Yet for anyone seeking a new, one-of-a-kind auteur (and cinema is crying out for a new type of filmmaker right now), Noé’s work is essential and hugely rewarding viewing.

Alex Davidson on 25th March 2011
Author of 231 reviews