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Reviews
STAR RATINGS EXPLAINED
Unmissable 5 Stars
Excellent 4 Stars
Good 3 Stars
Poor 2 Stars
Tragic 1 Star

FILM DETAILS
Certificate
18
Cast
Gasper Noé
Paz de la Huerta
Nathaniel Brown
Cyril Roy.
Directors
Gaspar Noé .
Screenwriters
Lucile Hadzihalilovic.
Running Time
135 minutes

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Enter The Void
Gaspar Noé twists our melons (again)


Plot
When Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer living in Tokyo, is killed he morphs into a benevolent spirit watching over his sister (Paz de la Huerta).

Review
Enter The Void
Like Noé provocation Irreversible, Enter The Void is technically stunning, a kaleidoscopic head-fuck of extreme cinema that pulls in everything from 1947 POV noir The Lady In The Lake to the space trips of Kubrick’s 2001. It’s also dreadfully acted, tediously ‘profound’ and painfully overlong. Shot through the eyes of young drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) tripping in a Tokyo apartment, the prologue pulses with colour-saturated power. But when Oscar is shot, his ‘spirit’/the camera soars above city streets, into his past and inside the heads of friends, enemies and sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta), and it becomes a misogynistic, metaphysical dirge that necessitates super-close-ups of Linda’s weeping, Linda’s vagina, Linda’s abortion (plus dead foetus), dead-eyed graphic sex, ejaculation, conception and birth. Woah, that’s like life, man.


Verdict
Painting from a typical kaleidoscopic canvas Noé crafts a brain-bendingly metaphysical trip that definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea.


Reviewed by Andrew Male

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Your Reviews

Average user rating for Enter The Void
Empire Star Rating

Andrew Male

Whilst all reviews are indeed relative, yours has to be one of the laziest excuses for one I've ever had the misfortune to waste my time reading. ... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by fang at 22:16, 29 April 2011 | Report This Post


RE: Enter The Void

This is my first experience of Noe's work but it definitely won't be my last. Yes, Enter The Void was too long. Yes, some of the acting was a bit amateurish (although, it did kind of work, made the characters - most of whom were profoundly unlikeable - seem more real). Yes, it was a little self-indulgent. It was, however, a total and utter visual assault and it worked perfectly. I walked away from this film feeling brutalized, like I had just spent the last three hours tripping my ass off.... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by poppyxxx at 15:13, 07 March 2011 | Report This Post


New film from the director of Irreversible is an equivalent of putting your fist through a wall- it's a sort of an experience that lacks the point but can be easily mistaken with a bravura. In the minimalist plot, in the toilet of a club called Void, Oscar dies, shot during a police raid. His spirit stays to watch over his sister and reminiscent on their tragic past. As he floats over the streets of Tokio, and back and forth through time, we become witnesses to a delirious, nightmarish life t... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by Mr Oki at 12:42, 05 November 2010 | Report This Post


Our generation's Betty Blue/Les Amants Du Pont Neuf?

Every generation has one; the style-over-substance junior art-house movie that initially seems like the most profound, life-changing thing ever but, seen again five or ten years later reveals itself as slight, banal and embarrassingly pretentious. I think this is ours. I didn't think it was as bad as Empire did but neither do I think it deserves the five star reviews here. How can you overlook the wooden dialogue, the banal performances, the lazy misogyny (another film where women are punished f... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by TonyShj at 16:07, 02 November 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Enter The Void

HE VOID 2009sp; After living in Japan for some time and finding employment as a drug dealer, a brother sends for his sister to move Japan and live with him.The setting is the Japanese red-light district of the very near future. The sister gets involved with sex and drugs and the brother lives dangerously. With their parents gone from a horrible car crash ,all these two really have is each other in an exploitative world. The brother and sister associate with many deceptive people and t... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by evil bill at 19:45, 28 October 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Enter The Void

Not so much a review but more of a ramble. Possibly the greatest example of style over substance you'll ever, EVER see. As Adam Batman referred to in his empire forum review, this is proof that cinema can be hugely immersive without the need for 3D glasses and the technical bravado on display here -  from the camera work, the lighting, the sound & production design and even the opening credits - is nothing short of incredible, and an intense assault on the senses. It'... More

Posted by Qwerty Norris at 21:13, 05 October 2010 | Report This Post


Woah, that's like, an uninspired review man!

This review hardly does the film justice. Ok, so I'm an advocate of psychedelic shit, so what, but this film is much more than what Mr. Male makes it out to be. And why end the review on such a snarky fucking comment? I know Noe is hellbent on polarizing the masses and I'm fully aware of the fact Enter The Void is a sprawling, messy, but yet mesmerizingly clean pile of hokum, but isn't that just what it's all about? Two stars I find rather insulting, give the work put into this monster. It's a ... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by presidentcletus at 20:04, 04 October 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Enter The Void

Director: Noe Screenwriters: Hadzihalilovic, Gaspar Noe Starring: el Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander Synopsis When Oscar (Brown), a drug-dealing teen, is killed in Tokyo, he reappears as a ghost to watch over his sister Linda (de la Huerta). Review Early this year, we had Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bonesich Saoirse Ronan watched over the lives of her family whilst wandering around the afterlife, which was all light and fluffy. However, ‘light and f... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by R W at 23:09, 29 September 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Enter The Void

Empire got this wrong. It's far from a 2 star film. This is unlike anything you will have ever seen and is pretty much unmissible if you are a cinema fan. Bold, breathtaking, emotional, and quite quite insane. It is not without its flaws, but I think Empire completely missed the point. If you want a better review of this film - check out the Guardian's review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/23/enter-the-vo id-review ... More

Posted by jrewing1000 at 22:24, 27 September 2010 | Report This Post


A film like no other!

One of the most staggering directed films You will ever see! Hard to get through it, but get to the end and you will never forget the masterpiece called Enter The Void! Luke ... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by luke.R at 12:51, 25 September 2010 | Report This Post


Very disappointed with this one. Technically a masterpiece but about an hour too long. There's only so many times you can watch Noé zoom into things and not be bored. ... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by jcallan at 18:26, 24 September 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Outstanding.

L: Indio It seems to be a real Marmite film, all the reviews I've seen think it's either one of the most profound movies the reviewer has seen in donkeys years or it's a prententious load of plotless bollocks that drags on and on (and on). I'm going to see it at the Curzon Soho on Friday night with a Q & A with Noe afterwards, I'm really looking forward to it. eard very much the same sort of thing, can't wait to see it next week.... P.S. Great write up Adam, as always.... ... More

Posted by Qwerty Norris at 03:47, 22 September 2010 | Report This Post


RE: Outstanding.

It seems to be a real Marmite film, all the reviews I've seen think it's either one of the most profound movies the reviewer has seen in donkeys years or it's a prententious load of plotless bollocks that drags on and on (and on). I'm going to see it at the Curzon Soho on Friday night with a Q & A with Noe afterwards, I'm really looking forward to it. ... More

Posted by Indio at 23:21, 21 September 2010 | Report This Post


Outstanding.

Enter The Void, 2010. Gaspar Noé, FRA/GER/ITA. If David Fincher directed It’s A Wonderful Life using Google Earth, the resulting piece of film would resemble Enter The Void. This is the film that puts an end to the argument in favor of 3D. Gaspar Noe’s latest film, which resembles Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey far more than it does any of Noe’s own previous work, proves to be a far more immersive experience than anything previously seen in three dimensions, and without the n... More

Empire User Rating

Posted by adambatman82 at 18:04, 21 September 2010 | Report This Post



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