Enter the Void

First things first, and this should be a warning on the poster; those who suffer from photosensitive epilepsy should avoid this at all costs as Enter The Void is ablaze with flickering lights. Noe returns eight years after Irreversible and those who have seen that are probably glad of the break. Irreversible, with its Memento-esque backwards story telling, was a lot of things: difficult, disturbing, violent, horrific and inventive. I loved it but I'll never watch it again. Enter The Void is just as difficult, disturbing, violent, horrific and inventive. I hated it and will never watch it again.

"Dying would be the ultimate trip." Oscar (newcomer Brown) lives in Tokyo with his naïve sister Linda (La Huerta); they have been orphans since a young age but their close relationship has bordered on the incestuous. Oscar is a small time dealer, hawking grass, pills and the hallucinogenic DMT to his pals; Linda is a prostitute, hawking her body to Japanese businessmen in seedy, neon-lit nightclubs. While dropping off some gear to a mate in the bar, The Void, Oscar is set upon by Tokyo police, and, as he tries to dump the drugs into the bar's toilet, he's shot dead. Oscar's spirit then flits about the city, checking in on those he was close to, a two-hour sequence interrupted by flashbacks.

Initially Enter The Void was the best thing I had seen all year. The entire opening gambit, right up to Oscar's shooting, is from his Lady In The Lake style point-of-view; the audience is in his head and we're only get a glimpse of his face when he looks in the mirror. There's a tension to everything, a squalid, rising anxiety that is hard to pinpoint.

Then Noe ruins all his good work as everything falls apart... very... damn... slowly: Enter The Void becomes endlessly repetitive, frustratingly pointless, extremely self-indulgent and very annoying (maybe reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, referenced more than once here, would help). Oscar's spirit takes the viewer around Tokyo sights not seen in travel brochures - usually dingy red light nightclubs soundtracked by typical Noe dark techno. I had long given up before Noe 'treated' the audience to not one but two close ups of an discarded foetus. That's just a flavour of what's in store.

To his credit, even in his extremely self-indulgent sequences, Noe's directing technique remains impressive, as some time and deliberation must have taken to conceive the camerawork here. The continuous overhead shots (even though there are far too many) that glide over rooms and the throughout the city can be majestic. The director brings you places you don't want to go, and where the medium of film offers that safety zone Noe has the knack of breaking that down.

If Noé had shaved an hour off this, it would have been brilliant. But he didn't so it's not.