Enter the Void
Encyclopedia
Enter the Void is a French film written and directed by Gaspar Noé
, starring Nathaniel Brown
, Paz de la Huerta
, and Cyril Roy. Set in the neon-lit nightclub environments of Tokyo
, the story follows Oscar, a young American drug dealer who gets shot by the police, but continues to watch succeeding events during an out-of-body experience
fuelled by the drug DMT
. The film is shot from a first-person viewpoint, which often floats above the city streets, and occasionally features Oscar staring over his own shoulder as he recalls moments from his past. Noé labels the film as a "psychedelic melodrama".
Noé's dream project for many years, the production was made possible after the commercial success of Irréversible
, the director's previous feature film. Enter the Void was primarily financed by Wild Bunch
, while Fidélité Films led the actual production. The cast is a mix of professionals and first-timers. The film makes heavy use of imagery inspired by experimental cinema and psychedelic drug
experiences. Principal photography took place on location in Tokyo, and involved many complicated crane shots. Co-producers included the visual effects studio BUF Compagnie
, which also provided the computer-generated imagery
. The film's soundtrack is a collage of electronic pop and experimental music.
A rough version of the film premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
, but post-production work continued, and the film was not released in France until almost a year later. A cut-down version was released in the United States and United Kingdom in September 2010. The critical response was sharply divided: positive reviews described the film as captivating and innovative, while negative critics called it tedious and puerile. The film performed poorly at the box office.
, a Buddhist book about the afterlife. The first act follows Oscar's nightly routine through strict point-of-view shots, including momentary blackouts that represent blinking, and extended sequences of drug-induced hallucination.
Oscar and Alex leave the apartment to deliver drugs to Oscar's friend Victor. On the way, Alex explains parts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead to Oscar: how the spirit of a dead person sometimes stays among the living until it begins to experience nightmares, after which it attempts to reincarnate. They arrive at a bar called The Void. Oscar enters alone and sits down with a distressed Victor, who mutters "I'm sorry", before they are swarmed by police officers. Oscar seals himself in a bathroom stall and attempts to flush his drugs. When the toilet does not work, he yells through the door that he has a gun and will shoot. In response, a police officer fires and hits Oscar, who falls to the floor.
Oscar's viewpoint rises and looks at his body from above, and then we begin to witness his life in a roughly chronological order. His loving parents were killed in a violent car crash; Oscar and Linda, devoted to each other, were sent to different foster homes; Oscar moved to Tokyo and earned money through drug dealing until he could afford to bring Linda to live with him; Linda found work as a stripper for the nightclub owner Mario, to Oscar's distress; Oscar increased the scope of his dealing operations and started using potent psychedelics
—in particular, DMT
—more frequently; Victor discovered that Oscar slept with Victor's mother; and finally, we again see Oscar meet Victor at The Void to sell him drugs, only to be shot in the bathroom.
Next, a disembodied Oscar floats over Tokyo and witnesses the aftermath of his death. Linda becomes withdrawn and despondent, especially after getting an abortion; Oscar's dealer, Bruno, destroys his stash; Alex lives in hiding on the streets, and Linda wishes she would have been with Alex instead of Mario, as Oscar had wanted. On one occasion Linda wishes that Oscar would come back to life; Oscar then enters Linda's head, after which he wakes up at the morgue. Linda and Mario arrive and pick him up, but they are disgusted by him and he is unable to speak. Oscar is eventually convinced by Alex that he is dreaming, and returns to watch his friends from a floating perspective. Victor screams at his mother because she had sex with his friend and is thrown out of his parents' home. He shows up at Linda's apartment and apologises for having her brother killed, but says Linda is partially to blame since she hung around with creeps. This angers Linda, who repeatedly screams that Victor should kill himself.
Oscar hovers high above Tokyo and enters an airplane, where he sees his mother, who breast-feeds a baby to whom she whispers Oscar's name. The view then drops to Linda and Alex, who take a taxi to a Tokyo love hotel and have sex. Oscar moves between hotel rooms and observes several other couples having sex in various positions. Each couple emanates a pulsating electric-like glow from their genitals. Oscar enters Alex's head and witnesses the sex with Linda from Alex's point of view. He then travels inside Linda's vagina to witness Alex's thrusting, then observes his ejaculation and follows the semen into the fertilisation of his sister's ovum. The final scene is shot from the perspective of a baby being born to Oscar's mother. According to the director, this is a flashback to Oscar's birth in the form of a false memory.
s—he saw Robert Montgomery
's Lady in the Lake
, a 1947 film shot entirely in a first-person perspective. He then decided that if he ever made a film about the afterlife, that was the way it would be filmed. Noé had been working on different versions of the screenplay for fifteen years before the film went into production. The story had initially been more linear, and the drafts were set in different locations, including the Andes
, France, and New York City. Tokyo was chosen because it could provide colourful environments required for the film's hallucinogenic aspects, and because Japan's repressive drug laws add to the drama, explaining the intensity of the main character's fear of the police.
Noé first tried to get the film funded in the early 2000s. Several producers responded positively to the script, and it was briefly under development for Tom Tykwer
's German company X-Filme Creative Pool. It was considered too expensive and the producers dropped out. Prospects changed when Irréversible
(2002) became a commercial success. Noé had written and directed Irréversible for StudioCanal
, and it was sold internationally by their subsidiary, Wild Bunch
. When the producers at Wild Bunch asked Noé what he wanted to do next, he answered Enter the Void. The project was once again considered too expensive in relation to its commercial potential, but when Wild Bunch discovered that Noé had started to develop the film for Pathé
instead of them, they said they were willing to fund it. Since development went slowly at Pathé, Noé chose to not renew his contract with the studio and accepted Wild Bunch's offer.
Enter the Void was produced under Fidélité Films, with 70% of the budget invested by Wild Bunch. French co-producers included Noé's company Les Cinémas de la Zone and the visual effects studio BUF Compagnie
. It received pre-sales investment from Canal+
and funding from Eurimages
. Additional co-production support was provided by Essential Filmproduktion of Germany and BIM Distribuzione of Italy. The total budget was €12.38 million. In retrospect Noé called Irréversible a bank robbery, a film made in order to finance Enter the Void. He also saw it as a helpful technical exercise.
The decision to use English-speaking actors was made early. Since the film would be very visual, the director wanted audiences to be able to focus on the images, and not have to rely on subtitles. He later expressed his approval of the use of dubbed voice tracks in non-English speaking countries.
The role of Linda was the first to be cast. Noé found Paz de la Huerta
after holding auditions in New York City. "I met Paz and I really liked her. She had the profile for the character because she likes screaming, crying, showing herself naked—all the qualities for it." Due to a desire that Linda and Oscar should be believable as siblings, Nathaniel Brown
, a non-professional, was cast because of his resemblance to Huerta. Noé feared that a professional actor would be frustrated by being shown almost exclusively from behind, but he felt that Brown, an aspiring director, would find it stimulating to merely be present on the set. Auditions held for westerners living in Japan for other Tokyo-based roles. Cyril Roy went to an audition with a friend only because he wanted to talk with the director, whose previous films he admired. Roy was cast as Alex, since Noé found his talkative personality suitable for the role. Noé said about Brown and Roy: "The thought of acting in a film had never even entered their minds. They're easy-going people, they have a good time in front of the camera and I don't think there was a single moment where either of them felt they were working. Paz, however, was definitely conscious of the fact that she was interpreting a role."
, in which the active substance is DMT. This was done in the Peruvian jungle, where the brew is legal due to its traditional use as an entheogen
. Noé described the experience as very intense, and said he regarded it "almost like professional research." Since few on the design team ever had taken a hallucinogen, it was necessary for Noé to collect and provide visual references in the forms of paintings, photographs, music videos, and excerpts from films. One reference used was the works of botanist Édouard Marie Heckel
, whose drawings influenced the organic patterns seen during Oscar's visions.
Another important stylistic influence was the experimental oeuvre of Kenneth Anger
, and in particular Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
. Noé saw Anger's films in the early 1990s, while promoting the short film Carne
, and quickly became a fan. Other influences from experimental cinema included the works of Jordan Belson
and Peter Tscherkassky
. Noé's favourite film, 2001: A Space Odyssey
, was the most prominent influence among mainstream films; Noé wanted to become a filmmaker after he saw it at the age of seven. Brian De Palma
's Snake Eyes
and other films which feature hovering overhead shots inspired Noé to make a film largely from a such a perspective.
There were two reasons for showing Oscar's head and shoulders within the frame during the flashback scenes, rather than letting the camera be the character's eyes. The first was that this is the way Noé usually sees himself in dreams and when recalling past events. He also thought it would be easier for the viewer to care about a character who is visible, as many point-of-view films, in his opinion, look unintentionally funny.
worked as the supervisor of set designs in Tokyo. According to Noé, Caro had three months free after finishing Dante 01
, his first effort as a solo director, so Noé asked him to come to Japan.
The 100-page screenplay detailed plot developments and many of the visual traits, but very little dialogue was scripted, so the actors were asked to improvise their lines. Noé explained this approach: "For me, directing actors is just finding the right people and putting them in the right mood on the set and letting them go. ... I think the energy has to come on the set at the very last minute." Locations were used in Kabukichō and other parts of Shinjuku
. Since much of the film was set in neighbourhoods known for gambling and prostitution, the producers made agreements with the Yakuza
crime syndicates before filming some of the on-location scenes. Criminal organisations were not involved in the actual production. Studio scenes set in Tokyo were filmed at Toho Studios
. More scenes than originally planned had to be filmed in the studio because of the many complicated crane arrangements. Some of the overhead sequences took a full day to arrange and film. The scenes where Oscar is alive were mostly shot on location, but the crane shots were exclusively taken in the studio; this included revisits to some of the previous locations, which were replicated as large indoor sets. Other shots were taken from helicopters flying over the city. Much attention was paid to the continuity of the geography, and filming was overseen by a supervisor from the visual-effects team.
The film was mainly shot on Kodak
Vision3 250D film stock. Scenes where Oscar is alive were shot in the super 35 format with Arricam
LT cameras, and the rest in super 16
with an Aaton
XTR Prod. The cinematographer was Benoît Debie
, who also shot Irréversible. As in Irréversible, Noé was reluctant to use artificial lighting that would destroy the illusion if the camera was turned around. Thanks to Tokyo's many neon signs, very little additional lighting was required for the exterior scenes, despite the fact that many were shot late at night. For the interior scenes Debie mainly used practical, in-frame light sources. Some exceptions were made. One was that the moods of the characters were meant to be indicated by different colours, ranging from orange to purple with occasional greens. For this Debie used a set of red, green, and blue programmable disco lights
, which allowed for all different hues. The disco lights were easy to hide. They were also used for simulation of neon flashes, and to add a tint of red to the dressing-room scenes. Another exception was the use of strobe light
s, which were programmed together with the coloured lights. Blue colour was avoided throughout, since the filmmakers did not associate it with dreams. Noé was the film's camera operator, except for a few shots of Oscar running in the streets, as they required a taller cameraman. In those scenes the camera was held by Debie.
(CGI)—even the flashback scenes, where the backdrops were digitally altered. Studio scenes, helicopter shots, and CGI were forged together in the hovering sequences with the intention that the viewer should be unable to determine which is which. For shots from high altitudes, the team started with helicopter footage from video, and then created computer models of the neighbourhoods with textures from photographs. Neon lights, reflections, and dark areas were consistently accentuated. Flickers were created through a mixture of motion blur
, chromatic aberration
, and focus effects. For scenes seen as through a fisheye lens
, the team recreated the sets digitally and progressively increased the environments' reflection values along with the lens effect.
Noé initially asked the Daft Punk
member Thomas Bangalter
, who had composed the music for Irréversible, to create an original soundtrack for Enter the Void. Bangalter was occupied with work on Tron: Legacy and had to decline. As a compromise, he provided Noé with an arrangement of ambient sounds and samples from existing experimental music, from which Noé compiled what he envisioned as "a maelstrom of sounds." One of the sources of inspiration was "Revolution 9
" by The Beatles
, a sound collage
which Noé describes as a work "where you catch the beginning of a note, or of a melody and then it's already somewhere else." The two main musical themes of the film are "Freak" by the British electro artist LFO, which is played during the opening credits, and a recording by Delia Derbyshire
of Johann Sebastian Bach
's "Air on the G String
", which serves as the theme for Oscar's childhood and his relationship with Linda. The beginning of "ANS" by the British band Coil
is heard during Oscar's first DMT trip. The Throbbing Gristle
song "Hamburger Lady" plays as Oscar tries to deliver drugs to Victor at the bar. Other songs on the soundtrack include Toshiya Tsunoda's "Music for Baby", Alvin Lucier
's "Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers", and works by Denis Smalley
, Lullatone
, and Zbigniew Karkowski
.
When the film premiered at film festivals, it was initially shown in a version without any credits. As several people at the screenings complained about the length of the film, Noé decided that if the final version would have any opening titles, they would have to be "as fast as possible and as graphic as possible". The German experimental filmmaker Thorsten Fleisch was hired to create the title logo. Noé discovered Fleisch through his 2007 film Energie!, for which the technique of animated sparks had been developed.
. The Cannes cut lacked much of the finished film's sound design, and some visual effects were not fully in place. Noé said about the version: "the film was like a baby of three months. I took it out of my belly to show it, flattered by [festival general] Thierry Frémaux's invitation, but it was still in gestation. So I had to put it back into my belly, that is to say to tweak many details." Festival screenings of subsequent versions followed throughout the year, including the Toronto
, Sitges, London, and Stockholm
international film festivals. The final 154-minute cut premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
. At the Cannes premiere, the film had alternatively been listed with the French title Soudain le vide, which means "Suddenly the void". When it was released in French cinemas, it used the English title. It premiered in France on 5 May 2010 through Wild Bunch Distribution. The Japanese release followed ten days later.
Distribution rights for the United States were picked up at Sundance by IFC Films
. Trinity Filmed Entertainment was the British distributor. The film was released in the United States and the United Kingdom on 24 September 2010. In both these countries, the film was distributed without the seventh of its nine reels. The running time was therefore 137 minutes at 25 frames per second, which the director had instructed that the film should be played at, or 142 minutes at the more common 24 frames per second. Noé says that none of the cut material is essential for the film. He describes it as "some astro-visions, an orgy scene with Linda and the Japanese girl, the scene where you see [Oscar] waking up at the morgue and he thinks he's alive but he's not, and then the camera goes down the plughole where she's tipping his ashes." The reason the shorter version was made was that Noé had promised the investors to make an alternative edit if the film ended up being longer than two hours and 20 minutes. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in France on 1 December 2010. Each edition features both the complete version and the shorter cut.
started his review by recalling the irritation the film caused upon its world premiere in Cannes, and compared the cut he had seen there to the final version: "In all honesty, the difference does not jump to my eyes. Of course, the film seems more consistent, but that may be because we've already traveled this maze once. While leaving, we might remain calmer, but still amazed by the mixture of exuberant invention and puerility." A positive review came from L'Express
, written by Laurent Djian, who compared the film to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He applauded how he found the strobe lights hypnotising in a way that influenced the perception of time. "In 2010, no other filmmaker [in France] than Gaspar Noé can shoot with such mastery, nor draw us into a vortex of sensations as vertiginous." Ouest-France
s critic, on the other hand, was immensely bored by the film, and called it "a padding of simple ideas, stereotypes and cliches in a heap of contrived and vain images who think they're technical prowess. Soporific
cinema."
Upon the Japanese release, the critic writing for The Japan Times
reflected: "If Lost in Translation
is the film you'd make when all you know about Japan are the pampered press junkets at Shinjuku 5-star hotels, then Enter the Void is what you would make if you never got beyond the Roppongi
pub-crawl." While the review was largely negative, the author was still impressed by the visual depiction of the Japanese capital: "Visually, much of the film is stunning ... and the art design by Marc Caro (Delicatessen
) takes Tokyo's love of neon gaudiness to a surreal extreme".
As of 10 October 2011, the film had an aggregated approval of 72% from 83 English-language reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes
, with an average rating of 6.7 out of ten. Peter Bradshaw
of The Guardian
gave the film the top rating of five stars, and made a comparison to Irréversible, which he had disliked: "Enter the Void is, in its way, just as provocative, just as extreme, just as mad, just as much of an outrageous ordeal[.] ... But despite its querulous melodrama and crazed Freudian pedantries, it has a human purpose the previous film lacked, and its sheer deranged brilliance is magnificent. ... Love him or loathe him – and I've done both in my time – Gaspar Noé is one of the very few directors who is actually trying to do something new with the medium, battling at the boundaries of the possible." Andrew Male rated the film two out of five in Empire
. Male called it "technically stunning", but also "dreadfully acted, tediously 'profound' and painfully overlong", and accused the director of misogyny. The Village Voice
s Karina Longworth
had several reservations about the film. She thought the characters lacked emotional depth and called the story "a lame fusion of stoner lifestyle, sexual fetish, and philosophical inquiry", but still ended the review: "I could stare at this movie for days and not get tired of the sensation. A mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead, Enter the Void is addictive." Jen Chaney of The Washington Post
thought the film was successful as an "attempt to transport moviegoers to a hallucinatory version of the hereafter unlike anything they've ever witnessed on film", but, "The problem is that it's also the most excruciating sit in recent cinematic memory. And no, the fact that it's intentionally excruciating doesn't make it less excruciating."
. As of 20 July 2011, the website Box Office Mojo
reported that the worldwide theatrical revenues corresponded to US$
754,249.
, the special effects supervisor of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Lists
Thematically related
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and the son of Argentine painter and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. He graduated from Louis Lumière College and is the visiting professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland...
, starring Nathaniel Brown
Nathaniel Brown
Nathaniel Chaplin "Nathan" Brown is an American actor and director whose career started by playing the lead role in the 2009 thriller Enter the Void, which was directed by Gaspar Noé, and nominated for a Cannes Palme d'Or...
, Paz de la Huerta
Paz de la Huerta
María de la Paz Elizabeth Sofía Adriana de la Huerta , better known by her professional name Paz de la Huerta, is an American actress and model...
, and Cyril Roy. Set in the neon-lit nightclub environments of Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, the story follows Oscar, a young American drug dealer who gets shot by the police, but continues to watch succeeding events during an out-of-body experience
Out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body ....
fuelled by the drug DMT
Dimethyltryptamine
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in several plants, and also in trace amounts in humans and other mammals, where it is originally derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and ultimately produced by the enzyme INMT...
. The film is shot from a first-person viewpoint, which often floats above the city streets, and occasionally features Oscar staring over his own shoulder as he recalls moments from his past. Noé labels the film as a "psychedelic melodrama".
Noé's dream project for many years, the production was made possible after the commercial success of Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
, the director's previous feature film. Enter the Void was primarily financed by Wild Bunch
Wild Bunch (film company)
Wild Bunch S.A. is a French film production and international sales company. Originally a division of StudioCanal, the company has produced films such as Land of the Dead, Southland Tales and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?. They have also produced Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, Vicky...
, while Fidélité Films led the actual production. The cast is a mix of professionals and first-timers. The film makes heavy use of imagery inspired by experimental cinema and psychedelic drug
Psychedelic drug
A psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...
experiences. Principal photography took place on location in Tokyo, and involved many complicated crane shots. Co-producers included the visual effects studio BUF Compagnie
BUF Compagnie
BUF Compagnie is a French visual effects company, specializing in CGI for feature films, commercials, and music videos.-History:Based in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California, BUF Compagnie was founded by Pierre Buffin in 1984...
, which also provided the computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
. The film's soundtrack is a collage of electronic pop and experimental music.
A rough version of the film premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
2009 Cannes Film Festival
The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
, but post-production work continued, and the film was not released in France until almost a year later. A cut-down version was released in the United States and United Kingdom in September 2010. The critical response was sharply divided: positive reviews described the film as captivating and innovative, while negative critics called it tedious and puerile. The film performed poorly at the box office.
Plot
Oscar lives in Tokyo and supports himself by dealing drugs, against the advice of his friend, Alex, and his sister, Linda. Alex attempts to turn Oscar's interest toward The Tibetan Book of the DeadBardo Thodol
The Liberation Through Hearing During The Intermediate State , sometimes translated as Liberation Through Hearing or Bardo Thodol is a funerary text...
, a Buddhist book about the afterlife. The first act follows Oscar's nightly routine through strict point-of-view shots, including momentary blackouts that represent blinking, and extended sequences of drug-induced hallucination.
Oscar and Alex leave the apartment to deliver drugs to Oscar's friend Victor. On the way, Alex explains parts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead to Oscar: how the spirit of a dead person sometimes stays among the living until it begins to experience nightmares, after which it attempts to reincarnate. They arrive at a bar called The Void. Oscar enters alone and sits down with a distressed Victor, who mutters "I'm sorry", before they are swarmed by police officers. Oscar seals himself in a bathroom stall and attempts to flush his drugs. When the toilet does not work, he yells through the door that he has a gun and will shoot. In response, a police officer fires and hits Oscar, who falls to the floor.
Oscar's viewpoint rises and looks at his body from above, and then we begin to witness his life in a roughly chronological order. His loving parents were killed in a violent car crash; Oscar and Linda, devoted to each other, were sent to different foster homes; Oscar moved to Tokyo and earned money through drug dealing until he could afford to bring Linda to live with him; Linda found work as a stripper for the nightclub owner Mario, to Oscar's distress; Oscar increased the scope of his dealing operations and started using potent psychedelics
Psychedelic drug
A psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...
—in particular, DMT
Dimethyltryptamine
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in several plants, and also in trace amounts in humans and other mammals, where it is originally derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and ultimately produced by the enzyme INMT...
—more frequently; Victor discovered that Oscar slept with Victor's mother; and finally, we again see Oscar meet Victor at The Void to sell him drugs, only to be shot in the bathroom.
Next, a disembodied Oscar floats over Tokyo and witnesses the aftermath of his death. Linda becomes withdrawn and despondent, especially after getting an abortion; Oscar's dealer, Bruno, destroys his stash; Alex lives in hiding on the streets, and Linda wishes she would have been with Alex instead of Mario, as Oscar had wanted. On one occasion Linda wishes that Oscar would come back to life; Oscar then enters Linda's head, after which he wakes up at the morgue. Linda and Mario arrive and pick him up, but they are disgusted by him and he is unable to speak. Oscar is eventually convinced by Alex that he is dreaming, and returns to watch his friends from a floating perspective. Victor screams at his mother because she had sex with his friend and is thrown out of his parents' home. He shows up at Linda's apartment and apologises for having her brother killed, but says Linda is partially to blame since she hung around with creeps. This angers Linda, who repeatedly screams that Victor should kill himself.
Oscar hovers high above Tokyo and enters an airplane, where he sees his mother, who breast-feeds a baby to whom she whispers Oscar's name. The view then drops to Linda and Alex, who take a taxi to a Tokyo love hotel and have sex. Oscar moves between hotel rooms and observes several other couples having sex in various positions. Each couple emanates a pulsating electric-like glow from their genitals. Oscar enters Alex's head and witnesses the sex with Linda from Alex's point of view. He then travels inside Linda's vagina to witness Alex's thrusting, then observes his ejaculation and follows the semen into the fertilisation of his sister's ovum. The final scene is shot from the perspective of a baby being born to Oscar's mother. According to the director, this is a flashback to Oscar's birth in the form of a false memory.
Themes
The cinematic experience itself is the main focus of the film, but there is also a central theme of emptiness. Noé describes the film's subject as "the sentimentality of mammals and the shimmering vacuity of the human experience." The dramaturgy after Oscar has been shot is loosely based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and ends with the spirit's search for a way to reincarnate. The director, who opposes all religious beliefs, says that "the whole movie is a dream of someone who read The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and heard about it before being [shot by a gun]. It's not the story of someone who dies, flies and is reincarnated, it's the story of someone who is stoned when he gets shot and who has an intonation of his own dream." Noé describes the ending of the film as Oscar's recollection of "the most traumatic moment of his life – his own birth". Alternatively, the director leaves open the possibility that Oscar's life starts over again in an endless loop, due to the human brain's perception of time.Development
The idea for the film had been growing since Noé's adolescence, when he first became interested in matters of death and existence. In his early twenties—while under influence of psilocybin mushroomPsilocybin mushroom
Psilocybin mushrooms are fungi that contain the psychoactive compounds psilocybin and psilocin. There are multiple colloquial terms for psilocybin mushrooms, the most common being shrooms or magic mushrooms....
s—he saw Robert Montgomery
Robert Montgomery (actor)
Robert Montgomery was an American actor and director.- Early life :Montgomery was born Henry Montgomery, Jr. in Beacon, New York, then known as "Fishkill Landing", the son of Mary Weed and Henry Montgomery, Sr. His early childhood was one of privilege, since his father was president of the New...
's Lady in the Lake
Lady in the Lake
Lady in the Lake is a 1947 American film noir that marked the directorial debut of Robert Montgomery, who also stars in the film. The picture also features Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Tom Tully, Leon Ames and Jayne Meadows...
, a 1947 film shot entirely in a first-person perspective. He then decided that if he ever made a film about the afterlife, that was the way it would be filmed. Noé had been working on different versions of the screenplay for fifteen years before the film went into production. The story had initially been more linear, and the drafts were set in different locations, including the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, France, and New York City. Tokyo was chosen because it could provide colourful environments required for the film's hallucinogenic aspects, and because Japan's repressive drug laws add to the drama, explaining the intensity of the main character's fear of the police.
Noé first tried to get the film funded in the early 2000s. Several producers responded positively to the script, and it was briefly under development for Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing Run Lola Run , Heaven , Perfume: The Story of a Murderer , and The International ....
's German company X-Filme Creative Pool. It was considered too expensive and the producers dropped out. Prospects changed when Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
(2002) became a commercial success. Noé had written and directed Irréversible for StudioCanal
StudioCanal
StudioCanal is a French-based production and distribution company that owns the third-largest film library in the world...
, and it was sold internationally by their subsidiary, Wild Bunch
Wild Bunch (film company)
Wild Bunch S.A. is a French film production and international sales company. Originally a division of StudioCanal, the company has produced films such as Land of the Dead, Southland Tales and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?. They have also produced Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, Vicky...
. When the producers at Wild Bunch asked Noé what he wanted to do next, he answered Enter the Void. The project was once again considered too expensive in relation to its commercial potential, but when Wild Bunch discovered that Noé had started to develop the film for Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
instead of them, they said they were willing to fund it. Since development went slowly at Pathé, Noé chose to not renew his contract with the studio and accepted Wild Bunch's offer.
Enter the Void was produced under Fidélité Films, with 70% of the budget invested by Wild Bunch. French co-producers included Noé's company Les Cinémas de la Zone and the visual effects studio BUF Compagnie
BUF Compagnie
BUF Compagnie is a French visual effects company, specializing in CGI for feature films, commercials, and music videos.-History:Based in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California, BUF Compagnie was founded by Pierre Buffin in 1984...
. It received pre-sales investment from Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
and funding from Eurimages
Eurimages
Eurimages is the Council of Europe fund for the co-production, distribution, exhibition and digitisation of European cinematographic works. It aims to promote the European film industry by encouraging the production and distribution of films and fostering co-operation between professionals....
. Additional co-production support was provided by Essential Filmproduktion of Germany and BIM Distribuzione of Italy. The total budget was €12.38 million. In retrospect Noé called Irréversible a bank robbery, a film made in order to finance Enter the Void. He also saw it as a helpful technical exercise.
Casting
| Actor | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Nathaniel Brown Nathaniel Brown Nathaniel Chaplin "Nathan" Brown is an American actor and director whose career started by playing the lead role in the 2009 thriller Enter the Void, which was directed by Gaspar Noé, and nominated for a Cannes Palme d'Or... |
Oscar | |
| Paz de la Huerta Paz de la Huerta María de la Paz Elizabeth Sofía Adriana de la Huerta , better known by her professional name Paz de la Huerta, is an American actress and model... |
Linda | |
| Cyril Roy | Alex | |
| Emily Alyn Lind Emily Alyn Lind Emily Alyn Lind is an American actress best known as Vanessa in the Hallmark movie, November Christmas and as Emma in All My Children. She's the daughter of actress Barbara Alyn Woods and John Lind. She has an older sister, Natalie Lind, and a younger sister, Alyvia Lind.- Filmography :-External... |
little Linda | |
| Jesse Kuhn | little Oscar | |
| Olly Alexander Olly Alexander Olly Alexander is an English actor and script writer. Alexander acting career began in theatre plays and films with such as Summerhill and Bright Star which was nominated for an Oscar, four individual wins and another eighteen nominations... |
Victor | |
| Ed Spear | Bruno | |
| Masato Tanno | Mario |
The decision to use English-speaking actors was made early. Since the film would be very visual, the director wanted audiences to be able to focus on the images, and not have to rely on subtitles. He later expressed his approval of the use of dubbed voice tracks in non-English speaking countries.
The role of Linda was the first to be cast. Noé found Paz de la Huerta
Paz de la Huerta
María de la Paz Elizabeth Sofía Adriana de la Huerta , better known by her professional name Paz de la Huerta, is an American actress and model...
after holding auditions in New York City. "I met Paz and I really liked her. She had the profile for the character because she likes screaming, crying, showing herself naked—all the qualities for it." Due to a desire that Linda and Oscar should be believable as siblings, Nathaniel Brown
Nathaniel Brown
Nathaniel Chaplin "Nathan" Brown is an American actor and director whose career started by playing the lead role in the 2009 thriller Enter the Void, which was directed by Gaspar Noé, and nominated for a Cannes Palme d'Or...
, a non-professional, was cast because of his resemblance to Huerta. Noé feared that a professional actor would be frustrated by being shown almost exclusively from behind, but he felt that Brown, an aspiring director, would find it stimulating to merely be present on the set. Auditions held for westerners living in Japan for other Tokyo-based roles. Cyril Roy went to an audition with a friend only because he wanted to talk with the director, whose previous films he admired. Roy was cast as Alex, since Noé found his talkative personality suitable for the role. Noé said about Brown and Roy: "The thought of acting in a film had never even entered their minds. They're easy-going people, they have a good time in front of the camera and I don't think there was a single moment where either of them felt they were working. Paz, however, was definitely conscious of the fact that she was interpreting a role."
Visual conception
Noé had tried various hallucinogens in his youth, and used those experiences as inspiration for the visual style. Later, when the director was already planning the film, he tried the psychoactive brew ayahuascaAyahuasca
Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...
, in which the active substance is DMT. This was done in the Peruvian jungle, where the brew is legal due to its traditional use as an entheogen
Entheogen
An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...
. Noé described the experience as very intense, and said he regarded it "almost like professional research." Since few on the design team ever had taken a hallucinogen, it was necessary for Noé to collect and provide visual references in the forms of paintings, photographs, music videos, and excerpts from films. One reference used was the works of botanist Édouard Marie Heckel
Édouard Marie Heckel
Dr. Édouard Marie Heckel was a French botanist and medical doctor, and director of the Jardin botanique E.M. Heckel in Marseille....
, whose drawings influenced the organic patterns seen during Oscar's visions.
| "There is nothing radically new, I took some techniques or narrative modes that were already in place from right to left in films, but used them in an obsessive manner." |
| Gaspar Noé interviewed in Libération Libération Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s... |
Another important stylistic influence was the experimental oeuvre of Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
, and in particular Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is a short 38 minute film by Kenneth Anger, filmed in 1954. Anger created two other versions of this film in 1966 and the late 1970s. According to Anger, the film takes the name "pleasure dome" from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's atmospheric poem Kubla Khan...
. Noé saw Anger's films in the early 1990s, while promoting the short film Carne
Carne (film)
Carne is a 1991 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Philippe Nahon and Blandine Lenoir. It tells the story of a horse butcher with an autistic daughter. At a running time of 40 minutes, it was the first longer film directed by Noé...
, and quickly became a fan. Other influences from experimental cinema included the works of Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson was an American artist and filmmaker who created nonobjective, often spiritually oriented, abstract films spanning six decades.-Biography:Belson was born in Chicago, Illinois....
and Peter Tscherkassky
Peter Tscherkassky
Peter Tscherkassky is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker who works exclusively with found footage. All of his work is done with film and heavily edited in the darkroom, rather than relying on technological modes.-Early life:...
. Noé's favourite film, 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, was the most prominent influence among mainstream films; Noé wanted to become a filmmaker after he saw it at the age of seven. Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
's Snake Eyes
Snake Eyes (film)
Snake Eyes is a conspiracy thriller film directed by Brian De Palma, one featuring his trademark use of long tracking shots and split screens. It starred Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino....
and other films which feature hovering overhead shots inspired Noé to make a film largely from a such a perspective.
There were two reasons for showing Oscar's head and shoulders within the frame during the flashback scenes, rather than letting the camera be the character's eyes. The first was that this is the way Noé usually sees himself in dreams and when recalling past events. He also thought it would be easier for the viewer to care about a character who is visible, as many point-of-view films, in his opinion, look unintentionally funny.
Filming
The crew filmed in Tokyo from 19 October to 15 December 2007. Flashback scenes were shot in Montreal over the course of four weeks the following spring, until 16 May 2008. The team went back to Tokyo twice for additional footage, once before the Montreal session and once when principal photography was complete. Only four persons on the Tokyo set were French; the rest of the crew was Japanese. Marc CaroMarc Caro
Marc Caro, born April 2, 1956, is a French filmmaker and cartoonist, best known for his co-directing projects with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The two of them met at a film festival in 1974, and directed three short and two feature length films together....
worked as the supervisor of set designs in Tokyo. According to Noé, Caro had three months free after finishing Dante 01
Dante 01
Dante 01 is a science fiction film by French director Marc Caro. It is the first solo directing effort by Caro, who is well-known for his directing collaborations with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The film was released in 2008.-Plot:...
, his first effort as a solo director, so Noé asked him to come to Japan.
The 100-page screenplay detailed plot developments and many of the visual traits, but very little dialogue was scripted, so the actors were asked to improvise their lines. Noé explained this approach: "For me, directing actors is just finding the right people and putting them in the right mood on the set and letting them go. ... I think the energy has to come on the set at the very last minute." Locations were used in Kabukichō and other parts of Shinjuku
Shinjuku, Tokyo
is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative center, housing the busiest train station in the world and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration center for the government of Tokyo.As of 2008, the ward has an estimated population...
. Since much of the film was set in neighbourhoods known for gambling and prostitution, the producers made agreements with the Yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
crime syndicates before filming some of the on-location scenes. Criminal organisations were not involved in the actual production. Studio scenes set in Tokyo were filmed at Toho Studios
Toho
is a Japanese film, theater production, and distribution company. It is headquartered in Yūrakuchō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group...
. More scenes than originally planned had to be filmed in the studio because of the many complicated crane arrangements. Some of the overhead sequences took a full day to arrange and film. The scenes where Oscar is alive were mostly shot on location, but the crane shots were exclusively taken in the studio; this included revisits to some of the previous locations, which were replicated as large indoor sets. Other shots were taken from helicopters flying over the city. Much attention was paid to the continuity of the geography, and filming was overseen by a supervisor from the visual-effects team.
The film was mainly shot on Kodak
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
Vision3 250D film stock. Scenes where Oscar is alive were shot in the super 35 format with Arricam
Arricam
Arricam is a 35 mm movie camera line manufactured by Arri. It is Arri's flagship sync-sound camera line, replacing the Arriflex 535 line. The design was developed by Fritz Gabriel Bauer and Walter Trauninger, and is heavily derivative of the cameras Bauer created for his Moviecam company, which was...
LT cameras, and the rest in super 16
16 mm film
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film...
with an Aaton
Aaton
Aaton is a motion picture equipment manufacturer, based in Grenoble, France. Aaton was founded by Eclair engineer Jean-Pierre Beauviala, whose efforts have been primarily focused on making quiet, portable motion picture hardware suitable for impromptu field use, as for documentaries...
XTR Prod. The cinematographer was Benoît Debie
Benoît Debie
Benoît Debie is a Belgian cinematographer. He is currently working on Marilyn Manson's first feature film: Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll.-Selected filmography:* Irréversible * The Card Player...
, who also shot Irréversible. As in Irréversible, Noé was reluctant to use artificial lighting that would destroy the illusion if the camera was turned around. Thanks to Tokyo's many neon signs, very little additional lighting was required for the exterior scenes, despite the fact that many were shot late at night. For the interior scenes Debie mainly used practical, in-frame light sources. Some exceptions were made. One was that the moods of the characters were meant to be indicated by different colours, ranging from orange to purple with occasional greens. For this Debie used a set of red, green, and blue programmable disco lights
Intelligent lighting
Intelligent lighting refers to stage lighting that has automated or mechanical abilities beyond those of traditional, stationary illumination. Although the most advanced intelligent lights can produce extraordinarily complex effects, the intelligence lies with the programmer of the show rather...
, which allowed for all different hues. The disco lights were easy to hide. They were also used for simulation of neon flashes, and to add a tint of red to the dressing-room scenes. Another exception was the use of strobe light
Strobe light
A strobe light or stroboscopic lamp, commonly called a strobe, is a device used to produce regular flashes of light. It is one of a number of devices that can be used as a stroboscope...
s, which were programmed together with the coloured lights. Blue colour was avoided throughout, since the filmmakers did not associate it with dreams. Noé was the film's camera operator, except for a few shots of Oscar running in the streets, as they required a taller cameraman. In those scenes the camera was held by Debie.
Post-production
Enter the Voids post-production process lasted more than a year. Work on the digital effects was led by Pierre Buffin of BUF Compagnie. Every scene in the film includes computer-generated imageryComputer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
(CGI)—even the flashback scenes, where the backdrops were digitally altered. Studio scenes, helicopter shots, and CGI were forged together in the hovering sequences with the intention that the viewer should be unable to determine which is which. For shots from high altitudes, the team started with helicopter footage from video, and then created computer models of the neighbourhoods with textures from photographs. Neon lights, reflections, and dark areas were consistently accentuated. Flickers were created through a mixture of motion blur
Motion blur
Motion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or animation. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single frame, either due to rapid movement or long exposure.- Photography :When a camera...
, chromatic aberration
Chromatic aberration
In optics, chromatic aberration is a type of distortion in which there is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same convergence point. It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light...
, and focus effects. For scenes seen as through a fisheye lens
Fisheye lens
In photography, a fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in a broad, panoramic and hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted...
, the team recreated the sets digitally and progressively increased the environments' reflection values along with the lens effect.
Noé initially asked the Daft Punk
Daft Punk
Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...
member Thomas Bangalter
Thomas Bangalter
Thomas Bangalter is a French electronic musician best known as a member of the French house music duo Daft Punk. He has also recorded and released music as a member of the trio Stardust, the duo Together, and as a solo artist including compositions for the film Irréversible.Thomas Bangalter owns a...
, who had composed the music for Irréversible, to create an original soundtrack for Enter the Void. Bangalter was occupied with work on Tron: Legacy and had to decline. As a compromise, he provided Noé with an arrangement of ambient sounds and samples from existing experimental music, from which Noé compiled what he envisioned as "a maelstrom of sounds." One of the sources of inspiration was "Revolution 9
Revolution 9
"Revolution 9" is a recorded composition that appeared on The Beatles' 1968 self-titled LP release . The sound collage, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution...
" by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, a sound collage
Sound collage
In music, montage or sound collage is a technique where sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage, the use of portions of previous recordings or scores...
which Noé describes as a work "where you catch the beginning of a note, or of a melody and then it's already somewhere else." The two main musical themes of the film are "Freak" by the British electro artist LFO, which is played during the opening credits, and a recording by Delia Derbyshire
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's "Air on the G String
Air on the G String
The "Air on the G String" is an adaptation by August Wilhelmj of the Air, the second movement from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No...
", which serves as the theme for Oscar's childhood and his relationship with Linda. The beginning of "ANS" by the British band Coil
Coil (band)
Coil were an English cross-genre, experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his partner Peter Christopherson, aka "Sleazy". The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be...
is heard during Oscar's first DMT trip. The Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
song "Hamburger Lady" plays as Oscar tries to deliver drugs to Victor at the bar. Other songs on the soundtrack include Toshiya Tsunoda's "Music for Baby", Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and...
's "Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers", and works by Denis Smalley
Denis Smalley
Denis Arthur Smalley is a composer of electroacoustic music, with a special interest in acousmatic music.-Biography:...
, Lullatone
Lullatone
Lullatone is a popular music group based in Nagoya, Japan, whose music is characterized by an innocent, child-like quality and spare, lo-fi sounds. Although the group refers to their style of music as "pajama-pop", it is commonly included in such musical subgenres as Twee pop, Indie pop and...
, and Zbigniew Karkowski
Zbigniew Karkowski
Zbigniew Karkowski was born in 1958 in Krakow, Poland. He studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden, aesthetics of modern music at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Musicology, and computer music at the Chalmers University of Technology...
.
When the film premiered at film festivals, it was initially shown in a version without any credits. As several people at the screenings complained about the length of the film, Noé decided that if the final version would have any opening titles, they would have to be "as fast as possible and as graphic as possible". The German experimental filmmaker Thorsten Fleisch was hired to create the title logo. Noé discovered Fleisch through his 2007 film Energie!, for which the technique of animated sparks had been developed.
Release
A 163-minute version of the film competed in the main competition of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival2009 Cannes Film Festival
The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
. The Cannes cut lacked much of the finished film's sound design, and some visual effects were not fully in place. Noé said about the version: "the film was like a baby of three months. I took it out of my belly to show it, flattered by [festival general] Thierry Frémaux's invitation, but it was still in gestation. So I had to put it back into my belly, that is to say to tweak many details." Festival screenings of subsequent versions followed throughout the year, including the Toronto
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
, Sitges, London, and Stockholm
Stockholm International Film Festival
The Stockholm International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Stockholm, Sweden. It was launched in 1990 and has been held every year in the second half of November...
international film festivals. The final 154-minute cut premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
26th Sundance Film Festival
The 26th annual Sundance Film Festival was held from January 21, 2010 until January 31, 2010 in Park City, Utah.-Award winners:*Grand Jury Prize: Documentary - Restrepo*Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - Winter's Bone...
. At the Cannes premiere, the film had alternatively been listed with the French title Soudain le vide, which means "Suddenly the void". When it was released in French cinemas, it used the English title. It premiered in France on 5 May 2010 through Wild Bunch Distribution. The Japanese release followed ten days later.
Distribution rights for the United States were picked up at Sundance by IFC Films
IFC Films
IFC Films is an American film distribution company based in New York, owned by AMC Networks. It distributes independent films and documentaries under the IFC Films, Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight. It operates the IFC Center....
. Trinity Filmed Entertainment was the British distributor. The film was released in the United States and the United Kingdom on 24 September 2010. In both these countries, the film was distributed without the seventh of its nine reels. The running time was therefore 137 minutes at 25 frames per second, which the director had instructed that the film should be played at, or 142 minutes at the more common 24 frames per second. Noé says that none of the cut material is essential for the film. He describes it as "some astro-visions, an orgy scene with Linda and the Japanese girl, the scene where you see [Oscar] waking up at the morgue and he thinks he's alive but he's not, and then the camera goes down the plughole where she's tipping his ashes." The reason the shorter version was made was that Noé had promised the investors to make an alternative edit if the film ended up being longer than two hours and 20 minutes. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in France on 1 December 2010. Each edition features both the complete version and the shorter cut.
Critical response
Thomas Sotinel of Le MondeLe Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
started his review by recalling the irritation the film caused upon its world premiere in Cannes, and compared the cut he had seen there to the final version: "In all honesty, the difference does not jump to my eyes. Of course, the film seems more consistent, but that may be because we've already traveled this maze once. While leaving, we might remain calmer, but still amazed by the mixture of exuberant invention and puerility." A positive review came from L'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
, written by Laurent Djian, who compared the film to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He applauded how he found the strobe lights hypnotising in a way that influenced the perception of time. "In 2010, no other filmmaker [in France] than Gaspar Noé can shoot with such mastery, nor draw us into a vortex of sensations as vertiginous." Ouest-France
Ouest-France
Ouest-France is a provincial daily French newspaper known for its emphasis on local news and events. The paper is produced in 47 different editions covering events in different French départments within the régions of Brittany, Lower Normandy and Pays de la Loire...
s critic, on the other hand, was immensely bored by the film, and called it "a padding of simple ideas, stereotypes and cliches in a heap of contrived and vain images who think they're technical prowess. Soporific
Hypnotic
Hypnotic drugs are a class of psychoactives whose primary function is to induce sleep and to be used in the treatment of insomnia and in surgical anesthesia...
cinema."
Upon the Japanese release, the critic writing for The Japan Times
The Japan Times
The Japan Times is an English language newspaper published in Japan. Unlike its competitors, the Daily Yomiuri and the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, it is not affiliated with a Japanese language media organization...
reflected: "If Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation (film)
Lost in Translation is a 2003 American film written and directed by Sofia Coppola; her second feature film after The Virgin Suicides and it stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson...
is the film you'd make when all you know about Japan are the pampered press junkets at Shinjuku 5-star hotels, then Enter the Void is what you would make if you never got beyond the Roppongi
Roppongi
is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous as home to the rich Roppongi Hills area and an active night club scene. Many foreign embassies are located in Roppongi, and the night life is popular with locals and foreigners alike...
pub-crawl." While the review was largely negative, the author was still impressed by the visual depiction of the Japanese capital: "Visually, much of the film is stunning ... and the art design by Marc Caro (Delicatessen
Delicatessen (film)
Delicatessen is a 1991 French black comedy film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, starring Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard. It is set in an apartment building in a post-apocalyptic France of an ambiguous time period. The story focuses on the tenants of the building and their desperate...
) takes Tokyo's love of neon gaudiness to a surreal extreme".
As of 10 October 2011, the film had an aggregated approval of 72% from 83 English-language reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, with an average rating of 6.7 out of ten. Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
gave the film the top rating of five stars, and made a comparison to Irréversible, which he had disliked: "Enter the Void is, in its way, just as provocative, just as extreme, just as mad, just as much of an outrageous ordeal[.] ... But despite its querulous melodrama and crazed Freudian pedantries, it has a human purpose the previous film lacked, and its sheer deranged brilliance is magnificent. ... Love him or loathe him – and I've done both in my time – Gaspar Noé is one of the very few directors who is actually trying to do something new with the medium, battling at the boundaries of the possible." Andrew Male rated the film two out of five in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
. Male called it "technically stunning", but also "dreadfully acted, tediously 'profound' and painfully overlong", and accused the director of misogyny. The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
s Karina Longworth
Karina Longworth
Karina Longworth is an American film critic, film blogger, radio personality, author, and journalist based in Los Angeles. She is one of the founders of the film culture blog Cinematical and formerly edited both Cinematical and the film blog SpoutBlog and, while living in New York, was heard...
had several reservations about the film. She thought the characters lacked emotional depth and called the story "a lame fusion of stoner lifestyle, sexual fetish, and philosophical inquiry", but still ended the review: "I could stare at this movie for days and not get tired of the sensation. A mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead, Enter the Void is addictive." Jen Chaney of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
thought the film was successful as an "attempt to transport moviegoers to a hallucinatory version of the hereafter unlike anything they've ever witnessed on film", but, "The problem is that it's also the most excruciating sit in recent cinematic memory. And no, the fact that it's intentionally excruciating doesn't make it less excruciating."
Box office
The film was a financial failure; according to Wild Bunch in February 2011, the film had returned 1.25% of the investment. In France it was launched on 30 prints and sold 51,126 tickets in total. Producer Brahim Chioua said the film had been difficult to sell abroad for a reasonable price due to the late-2000s financial crisisLate-2000s financial crisis
The late-2000s financial crisis is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s...
. As of 20 July 2011, the website Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...
reported that the worldwide theatrical revenues corresponded to US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
754,249.
Accolades
Enter the Void won the Special Jury Award and the prize for Best Cinematography at the 2009 Sitges Film Festival. It received the main award for best film at the 2010 Neuchâtel Film Festival. This especially delighted Noé, since one of the jury members in Neuchâtel was Douglas TrumbullDouglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...
, the special effects supervisor of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
See also
Cinematic context- 2009 in film2009 in filmThe year 2009 saw the release of many films. Seven made the top 50 list of highest-grossing films, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that as of this year, their Best Picture category would consist of ten nominees, rather than five .- Highest-grossing films :Please note...
- Cinema of FranceCinema of FranceThe Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
- Oneiric (film theory)Oneiric (film theory)In a film theory context, the term oneiric refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; "The dream factory" “...has become a household...
Lists
- List of drug films
- List of films set in Japan
- List of ghost films
Thematically related
- Near-death experience
- Recreational drug useRecreational drug useRecreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
External links
- Enter the Void at IFC FilmsIFC FilmsIFC Films is an American film distribution company based in New York, owned by AMC Networks. It distributes independent films and documentaries under the IFC Films, Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight. It operates the IFC Center....
- Enter the Void at MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...