Venturing where angels fear to tread, virtuoso filmmaker Gaspar Noé (Vortex) creates a dazzling journey into the Tokyo night, a mind-bending exploration of the outer reaches of human experience inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
This day-glo nocturne is told through the eyes of an American dope-dealer, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), tripping on a powerful hallucinogen. That is, until Oscar is shot in a nightclub, when the film takes on the aspect of an out of body experience.
Haunted by incest, shaded by hard-core sex, and travelling through an alternately beautiful and louche drug dream, Enter the Void is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. […] This is a work of uncensored genius, so even its faults are part of its success. A capital M masterpiece.
Mark Harris, Georgia Straight
With beauty, mild and sharp jolts, and mesmerizing camerawork [Noé] tries to open the doors of perception.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip, an experiential marvel, wired to paralyze the brain through a full-on assault on the senses.
Scott Tobias, AV Club
Gaspar Noé
Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Emily Alyn Lind, Jesse Kuhn, Olly Alexander
France
2009
In English and Japanese with English subtitles
Content consideration: Not for the squeamish, this includes explicit sex and gore.
Credits
Producers
Brahim Chioua, Vincent Maraval, Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier, Pierre Buffin, Gaspar Noé
Screenwriter
Gaspar Noé
Cinematographer
Benoît Debie
Editors
Gaspar Noé, Marc Boucrot, Jérôme Pesnel
Also screening at VIFF Centre this week
Cinema of Gaspar Noé
Lux Aeterna
Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg are on a film set telling stories about witches. Technical problems and psychotic outbreaks plunge the shoot into chaos. It's less than an hour long but a self aware tour de force from Gaspar Noé (Vortex).
Vortex
Reminiscent of Amour, Gaspar Noé's essential film compels us to look at aspects of life we too often shy away from: declining cognitive powers, the strains and stresses it places on an elderly married couple, played by Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun.
