Review XCVI - Enter the Void

Review XCVI
Enter the Void (2009)

Well, I guess this will be my final farewell to 2014 on this blog. I work tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully head off for some festivities in town. So what film have I decided to say goodbye with? Gaspard Noé's Enter the Void. I heard about Gaspard Noé a while back after finding this list of "fucked-up pretentious films". I brought up this director with my ex, but he wisely put his films on a shelf in a basement locked away from human touch. But, well, I got curious. Plus, how bad could it be? ... Right?

Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) lives in Tokyo with his sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta), and is enjoying a hit of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. He's awaken by a call from Victor (Olly Alexander), who asks that he bring some pills to "The Void". Alex (Cyril Roy) ends up tagging along, but things quickly turn for the worst, with Oscar being shot. Now he'll finally be able to experience the ultimate trip.

My first regret when I started this film was that it was over two hours and a half. A film better be damn good if it's that long. And guess what? It wasn't. Okay, so, first impressions. As I said, I mistakenly didn't pay attention to the length of the film. And this is was advertised as a messed-up film. I was already doomed. The film starts with a huge, neon sign reading "enter". I thought that was pretty cool. You soon realise that the film is captured through Oscar's eyes. We are Oscar. All right, that's innovative... A bit nauseating, but Oscar'll die and then we'll get normal shots, right? We'll get to that. So the film is through his eyes. I mean, it's unique, I'll give it that. But you'll notice something as soon as Oscar opens his mouth - Nathaniel Brown can't act for shit. Neither can Paz de la Huerta, but at least she has some life in her voice. Nathaniel Brown sounds like a fifteen-year-old filming a movie in his backyard for school - which is something I totally did and my acting totally compares to this guy. Okay, so I got some cool sign and innovative camera work, but I don't care for the acting. Now we get a psychedelic trip, which loses my attention quickly. But thankfully Oscar gets waken up rather quickly. Then we meet Alex - yep, this guy's acting is just as atrocious. And he has a huge hard-on for Linda. Never have I seen a brother so chill in listening to his drug dealer talk about how he wants to nail his sister. The two discuss what it's like to die according to some Buddhist book - I don't know. Foreshadowing has never been so strong.

Skipping ahead, we meet Victor, and, oh shit, Oscar's been set-up! Alex totally called it! And now he's been shot! Well, all right, no more first-person perspective. ... So now we're replacing this with a bird's eye view? And it's blurry? And swishing around like a drunk? Never have I been so aggravated while watching a film. Or sick. And the rest of the film is basically this view. But what about the plot? What do we get to see now? Well, Linda's a stripper and proceeds to bone her boss before she finds out her brother is dead. The irony! Oh, man, that was good, wasn't it? Guys, I could continue, but seriously, the plot is predictable as hell. We find out that Oscar and Linda's parents died in a car accident and promised they would never be separated. They discuss how their parents would "one day bring them to Tokyo", hence why the two are in Tokyo in the first place. Everything is explained with the use of crazy zoom-ins, epileptic-inducing flashes, and annoying, annoying shots. Can you tell I disliked the film? The ideas of the camera work were interesting - and we do get a break from the bird's eye view when we get some shots from behind Oscar's shoulder - but it gets old really, really fast. Had this been a short film, I would have thought it was cool what they were doing. But for a feature-length film, forget it. It gets annoying fast. If the plot and characters were any good, it would be forgivable. If the acting was fine, I could maybe forgive it. But the plot was shit and self-explanatory, I hated the characters, and the acting was probably the worst I've seen in a good while. I find it difficult to pinpoint good acting at times, but here, the acting is just garbage. And you know what? Gaspard Noé doesn't speak English, and his scenes are improvised. So he had to have someone tell him the dialogue was coherent while he filmed. This explains the really shitty dialogue, the really predictable dialogue from subpar actors and actresses. It could also explain the really shitty acting. And guess what? Because this is a messed-up film, we get some really pointless sex scenes. Here's a spoiler for you, but at the end, Linda has sex with Alex after she gets an abortion from her boss (did I mention I hate every character in this film?). She proceeds to say, "Cum inside me." Next we get some digitally-animated penis in a vagina. I know porn videos do this sometimes (granted, it's real, not animated), but... why. WHY. And then Oscar is reborn. This connection between mother, sister, and lover is shown throughout the whole film. Let's Freudian it up some more, guys! Honestly, the last ten minutes are probably just of people having sex. I can't remember because I was reading comics at the same time because I couldn't wait for the film to end. Honestly, these weird films and their sex scenes. Please, guys, stop.

This film was too long for nothing. The acting was shit, the characters were shit, and the plot was uninteresting. Any good thing the film had going for it was defenestrated within a short period of time. The crazy, tripped out ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey had a point to it. This film was just crazy for the sake of being crazy. And you know what? It wasn't even that crazy. Everything was spelled out to the viewer. So I'm not satisfied in any regard. Avoid Enter the Void. I'm sure this won't be the last we hear of Gaspard Noé.