Fatuous in content and overly restless in form.
Enter the Void is more sensory assault than movie, a drug-fuelled kaleidoscope of strobing lights (at one point the screen convulses white for a full minute), with a swirling, hovering camera that can go through walls and inside bodies.
Nothing can help Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. Noé has cut 45 minutes for the current release version. It is desperation surgery. The film I saw was inoperable.
Some may find Enter the Void detestable and objectionable, though if they affect to find it "boring" I will not believe them. For all its hysterical excess, this beautiful, delirious, shocking film is the one offering us that lightning bolt of terror or inspiration that we hope for at the cinema.
Highly predictable, but Noe treats it as though the secrets of life, the universe and everything were hidden within. They’re not.
Mostly though, this is a relentless experiment in post-cinema, a maddening but memorable compound of orientalism, technophilia and pharmaceutical aesthetics.
Gaspar Noé's first film in eight years is disappointing.
Less shocking than tedious and almost unwatchable due to its frenetic editing and use of a handheld camera.
Painting from a typical kaleidoscopic canvas Noé crafts a brain-bendingly metaphysical trip that definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea.
Sex and drugs, heart and soul. A hypnotic headfuck with a humane afterglow. You'll only see it once; but once seen, never forgotten.
Interview: Gaspar Noe, film director
Gaspar Noe: 'What's the problem?'
Gaspar Noe's 'Enter the Void'
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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