Certain films you love because they touch you personally. Others you love because they tell a story so gripping you feel part of it yourself. Some you love for their part in shaping you as a cinephile, even as a person. Then there are the handful of films you love simply because you must love: because they represent so bold an authorial vision, so striking a view of the world, so wholly unique a perspective on life through cinema, that love is all you can respond with. Enter the Void, to my eyes, belongs in a very elite club. Its fellow members, those that come to mind at once, are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Synecdoche, New York, and The Tree…

Have you ever watched a movie that begins with a gunshot and ends with a cumshot?

No?

Well I just did...

And it was one of the most horrifyingly beautiful psychedelic experiences I've ever had the pleasure of viewing in my life.

From what I read about the movie it seems to be pretty hit or miss with people. I pity the people who saw no substance in this film. Because underneath its odd outer layer is a film that makes you laugh, makes you turn away in disgust, makes you stare on in awe, and makes you cry. Yes, I cried. Movies rarely make me cry.

Lets make this point clear right now.

Movies. Rarely. Make. Me. Cry.

Well…

Well shit it's 02:15 so I'd better wank this review out quickly as I like my immediate thoughts to be broadcast unfiltered every now and then.

I'm going to start out with the visuals of this film because they were probably the most impressive and imposing aspect. The opening titles are unbelievably brilliant. They sort of perpetuated the myth of this film as an ultra-cool music video-esque extravaganza of style that I've always had in my head. Really this film isn't that at all; it's pretty fucking grim for almost the entirety of its runtime.

'Void' has some interesting and unique effects that work really well. The use of tilt-shift during the (literal) climactic scene to accentuate the model-ness of…

The more I watch Gaspar Noé's films, the more I like it. Now that I've completed all his films, I can honestly say that he is one of the best filmmakers around.

The first question that comes to my mind when I think about the quality of his films is the reason most people dislike them: the style. As I've said before, the question "style over substance" has been so used lately that it has become a cliché, and a bad one. Bad specially because it is more like a addiction of people disinterested in art but interested in entertainment. The difference between one thing and another is exactly the style over these two. Whilst in Art style means substance,…

Well the film is a definite visual and aural marvel that looks quite unlike any film I've seen before. You could spend hours wondering how individual shots were achieved, how scene transitions and the diffused neon glow were handled. As an example in aesthetics the film is a stone cold classic and one that should be experienced at least once (I wish I'd seen it in the cinema or at least in HD as the film deserves to be watched on the best set-up possible). If the film was only an hour and a half maybe snazzy cinematography is all I needed but at two and a half hours (the director's cut length) I was beginning to crave more. Flashbacks,…

Gaspar Noe is one of the most daring filmmakers simple a plain, he spits in the face of conventions. The idea for Enter the Void was heavily influenced by The Tibetan Book of the Dead (which is referenced in the film), and in the book afterlife is described as being a journey for the soul where it freely travels through time and the world watching life go on as it searches for reincarnation. Oscar,a young drug dealer, is killed when a drug exchange goes wrong and his soul re-experiences his life as well as watches the lives of the people he knew that are still living. This is an existential journey at its most primal. Noe's hallucinatory visual techniques and…

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I have to admit I somewhat actively avoided watching this after all the coverage about it in Vice turned it into the hipster mantle piece to be able to say you'd seen that year. All of the dorks I know who follow that kind of thing closely saw it, had nothing to say about it, then forgot about it a week later. Maybe it was a good thing I waited because my opinion might have been contaminated by all the surrounding hype.

Here we have another highly ambitious work by Gaspar Noé. On the heels of the acclaimed and financially successful Irreversible, he was able to make something so abstract and experimental. I am always wary of…