Gaspar Noé’s “Enter The Void” was perhaps the most polarizing film at the Cannes 2009 film festival, possibly even more so than Lars Von Trier’s controversial “Antichrist.”
Reviled by many, there were a small, passionate few who felt the film was perhaps the most audacious film at Cannes in its avante gardeness. A disaster or art? It’s too easy to tell right now, though the nays are definitely in the majority. Still, Noé’s films are always an experience even when they fail, so its surely worth seeing. Anywhoo, a very brief teaser-trailer has appeared online, which isn’t much (a droning :45 seconds of mostly titles), but it’s something (and perhaps a scary indication of how stubbornly weird it is). Here’s the synopsis.
Oscar and his sister Linda are recent arrivals in Tokyo. Oscar’s a small time drug dealer, and Linda works as a nightclub stripper. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot. As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister that he would never abandon her – refuses to abandon the world of the living. It wanders through the city, his visions growing evermore distorted, evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.
The film was about two hours and forty minutes at Cannes and many complained, among many other things, about its length. Will we see it in North America later this year in possibly a truncated form? Which might not be a bad thing (see, “The Brown Bunny”). Let’s hope so. The film is apparently full of ambitious special effects — someone called it a feature film screensaver — so for his next act, Noé is apparently doing a low-key porn film.
