“Poster Warning” written by a Marketing team… furthermore, the Warning has Extreme Violence that I don’t recall, and should have finished with “and not much else”…

Reading a few Best Of lists lately I saw Enter the Void listed in some with the “You’ll love it or hate it” disclaimer.  That was enough for me, to be transparent I assumed in advance that I would probably hate it.

Why? My 12 seconds of research showed me all I need to come to this arbitrary – and it must be said ill-informed – decision, the director of Enter the Void, one Gaspar Noe, made Irreversible, a film I have heard about often but never bothered to see… because a 10 minute long brutal rape scene just doesn’t interest me.

So upon reading ETV was “controversial” (one of the more overused words in the cinematic lexicon) I pegged Noe as one of those guys who churns out films with the sole purpose to shock and build his notoriety, then dismisses any who decry his work as “not getting it” while a horde of young impressionable satchel huggers trail behind him swallowing and spreading the gospel, desperate to support something “new and challenging”.

And this is all the crap I though BEFORE I even watched one of his movies. Now who’s the judgmental one? (Wasn’t far wrong though.)

I am using exclamation marks to separate my sections here… I just feel Noe would want it that way.

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So I am somewhat disappointed that after watching Enter the Void in its entirity the other night this review won’t seek to castigate  or deplore the film, nor will I extol or priase the work of a master…

Because Enter the Void is pretty boring. In fact at the conclusion I thought it a perfect 6 film – which in OGR speak is “OK, so you made a movie, do you want a medal”, and it would justify that if it wasn’t a 90 minute film that unnecessarily pushed the 2 ½ hour mark!

After all surely 90 minutes of pretentious boredom is just as ordinary as 150?

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To the film: Enter the void is essentially three acts of 20 minutes that take place after 3 minutes of brain numbing flashing credits set to ordinary techno music.

SPOILER FREE. (I think – who knows?)

Act 1: Tokyo. Introduces us to a young man Oscar, he smokes some drugs, talks to a young woman, hallucinates for no less than 6 boring onscreen minutes, then grabs more drugs and heads to a club with a friend… where he is shot in the toilets by cops for having and dealing drugs.

Good news and bad news Oscar.

• Bad news = you’re dead.
• Good news = no more bad techno.

The first act ends with a stripper gets plowed in the back room (not a euphamism) by the boss, then finds out her brother was just shot in a nightclub toilet for having drugs.

Oh, and that’s 50 odd minutes gone… only about two hours to go.

Act 2: Shows the full backstory about how Oscar and his sister came to arrive at the opening moments, going allllll the way back to their childhood.

Act 3: Shows how those that knew Oscar deal with the news.

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Every Act includes drugs, sex, hallucinations, techno and clubs – too much of each in fact.

Padding out every scene are several unnecessary minutes where the camera floats around, often taking an overhead view that traverses Tokyo moving through each building until it arrives at where the story is due to pick up. This was cool once for a minute but the tenth time with each drama-pan taking a minute plus got verrrry old.

On the blessed occasions where we are saved from the google.maps.gone.wild approach Dr Noe uses the same cut technique:

• look at something,
• go fish-eye lens,
• look away momentarily ,
• then zoooom into the first thing you looked at, an ashtray, a lamp, a light etc.

When Oscar is alive and kicking the camera always follows the back of his head and goes where he goes, meaning the dialogue in these scenesis often muddy and occasionally straight unintelligible.

As it is (probably) cutting edge and because Noe is an auteur (according to himself) there are some shocks that really weren’t shocking – unless you are young and naive or a paid critic who is expected to be shocked and stick up for decency & the “American way” – in saying that I definitely didn’t need “penis-on-the-job cam”, “aborted foetus cam” or “sleazy 5 minutes overhead trawling through a dozen hotel rooms while people indulge in various sex acts cam”, but I can’t say any of these included-to-shock scenes disturbed me.

There are actually a couple of “cool” elements – in fact some of the ones listed above qualify – but not when repeated ad nauseum over and over until boredom sets in. Especially when the simple story could have been told in 50 minutes, and in reality isn’t that interesting in the first place.

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Here is how Mr Noe made a straightfoward film into an unnecessary discussion piece:

HE SWITCHED ACT 1 AND 2, THEN PUT IN THE “OO-ERR MISSUS” “CONTROVERSIAL” ELEMENTS, SOME PSYCHEDELIA AND THEN FILMED IT WITH DISCONCERTING, OFF-PUTTING – BUT REPETITIVE – TECHNIQUES.

There is a place for arthouse films, I used to watch dozens a year… now not so many. I understand that people want to discover something before anyone else, then laud and extol it while reminding everyone “I found it first” and critisising the haterz with the universal “don’t get it”.

But in saying that Mr Noe has his formula, and once it is worked out and you see just how creative he really is (or isn’t) he becomes the kid eating worms in the schoolyard for attention… after you do it so many times your one trick becomes boring and try hard.

“Wooooaaaahhhh, it’s like… pretentious mannnn!”

Enter the Void isn’t that bad (aside from being too damn long), but it sure isn’t good, and the world wouldn’t be any better or worse off if it just didn’t exist.

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I understand if the supporters of this film are High, Stupid or just Young, they can all share the same excuse: They just don’t know any better.

Hey 20 years ago when I had more time on my hands and desperately wanted to embrace the new, visionary and challenging (to me at the time) I might have been under the spell. Nowadays I simply quote one of the cinematic geniuses of the last century, Mr Roger Rabbit in saying:

“P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-leeeeeassssse!”

Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Awful people doing banal things with distracting psychadelia, shimmering imagery, disorienting and offputting angles there simply to confuse and bewilder, it was enough to make me wonder if I was watching Ozzy Osbourne and his horrible family watching countless hours of their home movies.