Cannes 2009: Enter the Void

In between the last flurry of LiC coverage and the awarding of the Palme d’Or, there were a number of other interesting films to play Cannes that have slipped through the cracks. I’m putting one of the monkeys in charge of picking up some of the loose ends.

Twitch brings us something of a teaser for Gaspar Noé’s Cannes competition entry Enter the Void. Unlike Irreversible, the controversial filmmaker’s newest film doesn’t have a 9-minute rape sequence (Manohla Dargis even suggests he’s mellowed), but his story of one last acid trip appears to have divided critics nevertheless.

Read on for more critical reaction…

Enter the Void (Soudain le vide). France
Director: Gaspar Noé; Starring: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta
In Competition

Daniel Kasman, The Auteurs Notebook

The only avant-garde film in Cannes’ Competition is Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, which picks up the gauntlet thrown down by the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer of an endlessly malleable cinema of acid-trip colors and plastic gymnastics and runs with it to endless, forceful, and nihilistic results.

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.

Despite its unpromising title, Enter the Void, his entry here this year, is an exceptional work, though less because of its story, acting or any of the usual critical markers. What largely distinguishes it, beyond the stunning cinematography, is that this is the work of an artist who’s trying to show us something we haven’t seen before, even while he liberally samples images and ideas from Stanley Kubrick and the entirety of American avant-garde cinema.

Mike Goodridge, Screen Daily.

Almost defying definition in contemporary cinematic terms, Gaspar Noe’s third feature film Enter The Void is a wild, hallucinatory mindfuck for adults which sees the director explore new shooting techniques and ambitious special effects to capture a young man’s journey after death. More experience than narrative, it runs to a massive 163 minutes, meandering and careening in and out of story and into visual realms and moods that are nothing short of hypnotic. It is a film that will instantly achieve cult status among young adults. If audiences care to, they can lose themselves in Noe’s images and trip on his imagination. If they don’t, they will be bored to tears.

Rob Nelson, Variety.

Billed by director Gaspar Noe as a “psychedelic melodrama” inspired by his hallucinogen-powered screening of Lady in the Lake, Enter the Void suggests the Gallic provocateur should get some better drugs. Not clever enough to be truly pretentious, Noe’s tiresomely gimmicky film about a low-level Tokyo drug dealer who enjoys one long, last trip after dying proves to be the ne plus ultra of nothing much. Having come in under the wire for Cannes competition, Enter the Void may once again be ready to enter the editing room.

While the overall audacity of the project can’t easily be denied, Enter the Void delivers an altogether different kind of pain than the director’s earlier pair of punishing provocations, I Stand Alone and Irreversible. Not even Noe’s detractors expect his work to be boring, but, at 162 minutes, the new film has more than its share of longueurs — despite showing what happens after death as seeing a lot of people having sex.

Filed under: Film Festivals, Trailers
Tags: Cannes Film Festival, Enter the Void, Gaspar Noe