Enter the Void 2009 is Gaspar Noé's psychedelic rendering of the Tibetan Book of the Dead's predictions regarding the death experience, explained in a short lecture by Alex (Cyril Roy) to Oscar(Nathaniel Brown) early in the film.. Oscar is the films protagonist but his face is seen only as a reflection in a mirror or briefly, from above, as his lifeless body lies on the floor of a toilet stall, dead from a gunshot. Thereafter, we see the film from the point of view of Oscar, or rather his spirit, as he relives his past experiences in which case we see the back of Oscar's head as we follow behind, or we flit above the scenes that are ongoing after his death, and follow the travails of his sister, with whom he had lived. Their lives revolved around sex and drugs in Tokyo and Linda {Paz de la Huerta) is clearly at sea without her brother. Of sex there is plenty, but the lighting is always subdued and filtered removing its immediacy and transfiguring it. An engrossing exploration of the use of film in depicting dimensions of the imagination if one can accept its conventions.
Review of Enter the Void
