Provocative (Argentine-born) French filmmaker and enfant terrible, Gaspar Noé has been terrorizing audiences with his controversial brand of cinema since 1998 when the savage and brutalizing “I Stand Alone” hit screens. The beautiful, yet excruciating “Irreversible” — which featured one of the most notorious rape scenes in a film ever — followed, and his third feature-film, “Enter The Void,” is a nightmarish and psychedelic experience that hits theaters this weekend in limited NY/L.A. release. While there’s plenty of eroticism and relentless single-takes — cinematic Noe staples — ‘Void’ is utterly unconventional, with the entirety of the film shot from the protagonists’ point of view.
For those unfamiliar with this ambitious DMT drug-trip it follows young dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), recently reunited with sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta, ‘famous’ for being naked in “Limits of Control”) in Tokyo. After Oscar is killed in a night club bathroom, director Gaspar Noe (“Irreversible,” “I Stand Alone”) explores the past relationship between brother and sister, the tragic fate of their parents and subsequent separation, and a dream/drug-like alternate reality via the spirit of recently deceased Oscar.
Brilliantly inventive or an impossible headache? Two reviews from our men on the field (here and here) were mixed on it, with our TIFF reviewer calling it a “trainwreck of a trainwreck” and our SXSW reporter stating that it’s an “absolutely mesmerizing trip that will burn itself into your psyche unlike anything else.” While it’s true that some elements just plain don’t work, it’s without a doubt an immersive visual experience, mostly exhilarating though admittedly quite juvenile at times. We sat down with the auteur recently — after a delayed interview where the director probably flaked on us to hang out with Benicio Del Toro — and he was kind enough to give an extensive interview to not only talk about his film, but to also delve into Hollywood, his lack of Tinseltown ambitions and, in particular, James Cameron.
The Playlist: What drove you to making this film or coming up with the story?
Gaspar Noe: I wanted to do my own “2001 A Space Odyssey,” like James Cameron did “The Abyss.” There are lots of movies — Wwat’s the name of this other guy who did the movie “Sunshine”… the director who did “Trainspotting?” I think “2001 A Space Odyssey” influenced so many directors. In my case, I’d say when I was 7 years old it was like, my first drug trip ever. I remember coming out from the movie and I felt I was stoned for the first time in my life. That’s also the movie that drove me to study cinema many years later, and when I started studying cinema, I was 17 and I was like most teenagers, smoking joints, trying a trip of LSD or mushrooms, and when you do those things you notice that all the movies that will present altered states of consciousness were quite bad or not accurate when it comes to the creation of those sensations, thoughts and visions you had when you were there. At that time I was watching movies like “Eraserhead” and Ken Russel’s “Altered States,” and I thought that it would be good to do, one day, a movie, a scene from the eyes of the main character, a POV, that would follow the main character through his hallucination.
Then you use that idea to explore a sort of afterlife or drug-induced limbo.
Yes, I was reading this book about life after death or also that you become above the death that tells you the trip of the souls, and afterlife, until you get reincarnated, all of that. and then I made a mix of all of those ideas, and I started developing a script. In the beginning it was a short film then it became a medium length movie then it became a feature a film, and I did rewriting over the years. In the mean time I was in other movies, but this was the project that I had in mind since I was 17. So I said, let’s make a movie out of all these different ideas, death, reincarnation, drugs, the science of death, tunnels, and it took me a long time to write it, it took me a long time to find the money for it, it took me a long time to find the right people to do this sort of thing [ed. note, it was almost eight years between “Irreversible” and “Enter The Void”].
Were you trying to challenge audiences with the unusual structure?
(Laughs) The audience, they are much more playful than years ago, because when you see “The Matrix,” the natural structure is really complex, when you see “21 Grams,” the natural structure is very complex, when you see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” . it’s complex. There’s more and more movies where — even “Inception,” for my taste has too much talk, but all these movies have very complex structures, even “Memento” had an [strange] structure, very complex. I just wanted to play with the audience like when the directors playing with my brain when I’d see a movie, like when I saw “Videodrome” I was so puzzled because I couldn’t tell when the guy turned really crazy and there was another reality than the reality that the main character was going through. But the idea is not to challenge someone else, but to create a world that you haven’t seen before or that is a mixed of different worlds that you have seen before but have never seen in one particular way, and then set the story inside that world.
You mentioned “Inception.” What did you think of that?
I liked the structure of the movie, I would just say that many moments — this is also something that I think about my own movies in many moments — you have too much dialogue. Compared to my movies, they don’t have as many dialogues as “Inception,” but most dreams are silence, they’re not talkative, and I would say too much dialogue killed the dream effect of the movie. But I liked the different layers, the different levels of reality, I would say I’m more into structures like the one of “Videodrome,” that are synched-up but at the same time, they are treated in the way that you don’t see one shift from one dimension to the other one.
I noticed there was two different cuts of the movie, the director’s cut and the theatrical cut.
There was the original cut that was release all over Europe, and then because I had signed a contract saying that the movie could be, that it had to do with different cuts, the movie went over 2 hours and 20 minutes, just for England and the United States, I managed to re-edit the negative reels, in a way that you could pull out the reel #7 out of 9 and show it, and you don’t notice that anything is missing. But I guess on DVD they’re gonna put both, or maybe… for example, in England, they’ll be showing both. Most of the time, they’ll be showing the shorter version but during the weekend they’ll be playing the longer version.
What’s missing in the shorter version?
The 17 minutes that are missing, that reel doesn’t contain anything violent or too sexual or controversial. It’s mainly a reel in which the main character dreams that he wakes up in the morning and he’s like a zombie, and after awhile he understands that he’s just dreaming that he’s waking up and that he’s just dead. I recognize both versions, but I’d say maybe it’s going to be easier to start with the shorter one in the States. But I think that also the movie is so trippy, because I added so many effects, like out of focus effects, etc. that for some people the movie’s already too experimental.
In “Irreversible” you had a character from your previous in film, does that happen in “Enter The Void”? What drove you to connect these movies?
No, at a point I was willing to put Philippe Nahon (The Butcher from “I Stand Alone” and “Irreversible”) in this movie but I couldn’t find how to put him in, but I wrote in at one point to put a poster of Monica Bellucci — a perfume poster with Monica Bellucci on a board in front of the apartment at the beginning of the movie and then I said it was like, a private joke. You can still see the small “Irreversible” poster inside his room, but there’s no real connection.
Have you had any bizarre Hollywood offers?
I had a few, but it was as I was working on “Enter the Void,” but I didn’t consider them seriously. The problem that I have is that, for example, coming from France and the way of working is quite different. The guilds are not as powerful, and also after having shot in Japan where people work 14 hours a day and 6 days a week, many people to me, they’d never get used to it. I’m used to, personally, working 14 hours a day.
You have no Hollywood ambitions, no major thing you would want to do in the system?
You can do a Hollywood movie shot elsewhere, better. I would say, it’s not a dream to do Hollywood movies, maybe there are some cases you need to go through Hollywood to do big budget movies, but I would see myself doing more of a career-like Lars Von Trier, if possible, where he can control his movies, work in his own countries, whether they’re English with American actors or not. I don’t know, it all depends on what is offered to me. If one day I get a script that really talks to me, maybe I’ll say yes. For the moment, all I know is that I want to do an erotic movie that will please myself.
How did you get involved with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk?
At the time, when I was doing “Irreversible,” I needed some pre-existing music for a party scene, so I met Thomas. To get the rights for Daft Punk was going to be very expensive, we were not able to pay what they asked, because the rights belong to the record company. But he had some other music that he had done personally on his own label, so we used that music. Once I was editing “Irreversible” I proposed him to do the music of the film. In the case of (“Enter the Void”) I proposed him to do the music but he could not do it because he was already working on the music for “Tron Legacy,” the one that’s coming out soon. He said,” I will not do the music, but if you want, I can do lots of sound effects for you,” and then you mix and match what you want. So what happened, is that he would work for a few days creating sounds, and then he gave the sounds to me and I mixed it in with pre-existing experimental music from other people, I also added some music that we bought from different bands. But he did not technically do the soundtrack, although he did a great job and now we have all these strange sounds that appear in the movie. And besides being a great musician and a great person, he’s also a great director, I don’t know if you’ve seen his movie “Electroma.”
Why did the film take place in Tokyo rather than a different city?
Because I had been there many times, and it’s a very very pretty city. The first time you get there, even if you’re sober, you feel that you’re stoned because the people don’t speak your language they barely speak English, for example. The whole culture is so different, blinking lights all over, it’s very colorful, it’s very speedy. So then the point was to convince the French financiers and producers that we could shoot in Tokyo and that it was not risky. Which actually was false, it was risky to shoot in Tokyo. And also, sometimes the neon lights in Tokyo, for example the main character in the movie smokes DMT, and DMT creates hallucinations that are made of very bright lights on a black background, a little bit like the paintings that the Mexican painters who do peyote do. So I was collecting images as references for what I wanted the movie to look like, and many of these references were coming from photos from Las Vegas or Hong Kong or Tokyo with just neon lights.
What did you think of “Avatar”?
I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it a lot. I cried twice or three times during the movie. Some moments were really trippy, when they get into that kind of forest with glow on the trees and I think the first time I had a 3D experience that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed it even more watching it in France in a regular theater with the glasses than I enjoyed it in New York on the bigger screen. The glasses were not made by Dolby and they were not as perfect.
Do you feel any connection to that movie, maybe similarities with “Enter The Void” and “Avatar”?
Yes, both movies tried to recreate a joint world, I don’t know,you can also put it in the same basket like “Wizard of Oz” or so many other movies — but they came out almost at the same time and I know that many people were complaining they were full of visual effects, both one and the other, but I would say mine is more for not a major audience but more for an audience for 18-25 and maybe “Avatar” is for younger audiences. But he did a great job. Cameron is really ambitious, he wants to make movies bigger and bigger every time.
Before the screening in New York at the Walter Reade in August, you told the audience to pay particular attention to the woman last scene. Are you nervous that audiences will miss your intentions?
Yes, because you see the face of the mother and not the face of the sister. That means that he’s not reincarnating inside of his sister, but he’s just either getting back into the loop and he’s going to start his life again or that he’s just dreaming of his only birth. In the shot you can not tell if it’s the mother or the sister, but I thought if I had put the sister at the end then I was promoting the concept of reincarnation, and by putting the face of the mother out of focus you can have a talk about that but at the same time, the dream is a dream and when the dream is over the dream is over.
“Enter The Void” opens in limited release this weekend, Friday, September 24.