Director: Gaspar Noé
Running Time: (UK Cut) 137 Minutes, (Director's Cut) 154 Minutes
Certification: 18
Starring: Nathaniel Brown, Paz De La Huerta, Cyril Roy, Emily Alyn Lind, Jesse Kuhn, Olly Alexander, Ed Spear, Masato Tanno
Across his directorial career, Gaspar Noé has tried making his dream project involving a psychedelic journey of the afterlife, although funding attempts failed until the success of 2002's Irréversible. Released eight-years after the controversial feature, Noé continues assaulting viewer's senses on a first-person trip through life, death, and rebirth.
Making a living in Tokyo, American drug-dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) tries to look after his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) who works in a strip club. After taking a hallucinatory drug, Oscar leaves his apartment to deliver drugs while sharing in conversations regarding the afterlife, his career-path, and his sibling. When he's shot by the police, Oscar's spirit experiences the past and the future in a non-chronological order.
Through a young man's desperation to reconnect with his sister after tragedy separates them, Noé and co-writer Lucile Hadzihalilovic depict a hallucionagenic trip mixed with the Tibetan Book of the Dead for the ultimate out of body experience. As Oscar experiences a life lost alongside a future out of reach, the seamless editing transitions between these different paths, brought alive courtesy of mesmerizing cinematography paired with a hypnotic soundtrack.
Experimental challenges are utilized by Noé for his passion project while not forgetting his provocateur roots, as he includes shocking close-ups of unexpected items. The fascinating ideas feel undone by a patience-testing runtime, which leaves repeated visions of the same car-set tragedy feeling tiresome. Alongside lacking characterization and performances, one wishes this passion project was a bit more disciplined.
Enter The Void is now available on Blu-Ray from Arrow Video
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