𓆰𓆪 Desolation Angel 𓆰𓆪

The real quasi-incestuous megalomaniac (how quasi? definitely not a four) that we are trying to escape from is surely Gaspar Noé, who delivers an all-time trip-sitter no-no list in the form of Enter the Void , a 2009 movie that will leave your mouth wide open.

The film is almost entirely shot in the first-person POV of Oscar, a young drug dealer living with his sister Linda in Tokyo. The city’s nightlife is the perfect playground for the luminous desires and dibilatating grief of Oscar, whose life is in — excuse me in the spirit of the quasi-incestuousness — a drug-fueled arrested development. Tragedy on a night on DMT kickstarts an unravelling of reality as the haunting past collides with drugs, sex, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with notes from The Interpretation of Dreams, Lost in Translation, Requiem for a Dream, and 1Q84, etc.

Is it a good movie? At times. Gorgeous, trance-like, ephemeral etc, etc, etc. The CGI has aged well, the characters are complex, and you can’t really go wrong with psychedelics and horny. However, vis-a-vis themes and plot, it’s exactly what you would imagine a French dude — although Noé is actually Argentinian — would cook up with the ingredients of drugs, sex, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. While not inherntly a bad thing, it’s off-putting and pleasantly disturbing at best. At worst, it’s about 75% of the way there to warrant that infamous walkout at the Cannes festival showing of Irréversible (more on this to follow). Would I recommend it? Absolutely not. Though I haven’t stopped thinking about Enter the Void since I saw it, and there is a lot to chew on.

It’s not like people eat magic mushrooms for their flavour.

↓↓ SPOILERS ↓↓

So shall we address the Habsburgian elephant in the room?

I’m the kind of person who finds incest to be funny (thank you and rest in peace Jessica Walter), so imagine my surprise when the milk ducts started firing on all cylinders. But all joking aside, Oscar’s seemingly random desire for Linda, the 7 minute Love Hotel Bardo indulgence sequence, and that hilarious 3D ending (more 6th grade Sex-Ed than the supposed homage to 2001: A Space Oddyssey star-child) were each so absurd that they alter and shape the entire film to it’s detriment.

“Smoking. It reminds me of sucking on my mother’s nipples. Best thing in my life.”

Oscar and Linda’s relationship is the thread that holds together the movie. And boy is this thread creepy. I know I’m asking a lot from Mr. Irréversible (have not watched it, will not watch it) here, but the combination infantilization sexualization is too much. No amount of high-brow analysis and possible symbolic interpretation can justify the flashback flashforward teddy-holding camoslie flashing, nor the torturous and unnecessary abortion scene. The first-person POV means that the element of voyeurism was inevitable. Still, nobody made Noé make the decision to make Oscar possess his buddy’s body to fuck Linda, and than subsequently emegres as their reincarnated child. There are thinkers who are more qualified to talk about this kind of egregious phallocentrism, but let’s just say that Noé makes Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” look like a checklist.

What’s all the more frustrating is that in the few glimpses we get of Linda’s character, she’s pretty cool. She is almost always glowing like the bright copy of the city and the fractal patterns of Sex, Money, Power (metaphor alert!!); there is a definite charm in her seraphic innocence. By far the most interesting character, Paz de la Huerta’s airy acting is a highlight, MPDG idiosyncrasies and all.

Stiff acting and a lengthy runtime are among the most common critiques of the movie, but these very real issues pale in comparison to the whole creepiness criticism. Where a film like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth is more self-aware in its absurd premise, the grittiness of Enter the Void comes across as pretentious more than insightful. We definitely could have done with a tighter Nathaniel Brown performance and tough-love trimming. I talked to a classmate about this movie, and he said in every scene he couldn’t focus because he would be looking for a hole for the camera to fuck excruciatingly slowly.

Some praise now. The film’s treatment of Japan and its people is straight up unproblematic and well done. Tokyo is a beautiful, nocturnal character whose neon blood and seedy nightlife take on a purgatorial life of its own. Not just the glitz and glamour but everything in between: back alleys, mid-size residential apartment complexes, and the slow glow of billboards. Simultaneously expansive and particular, it’s the best non-Japanese Tokyo movie I’ve ever seen.

Oscar’s world, bouncing between The Void, Sex, Money, Power (metaphor alert!!), and his well-lived-in apartment, is incredibly well-built. I can’t speak on the movie’s technical elements, but the visuals and set designs are awesome. The characters at the periphery of Oscar are also full of life and depth. While not a world you want to live in, I’m greatful for the peep.

Unfortunately, Enter the Void is a film largely defined by its limitations rather than its merits. However, as someone who frequently criticizes homogeneous narratives in movies, props for making big swings in a project that clearly had a lot of love and passion put into it. Haunting the streets of Tokyo as a Freudian ghost is fun, and of all criticisms to level at Noé, derivative or unoriginal are not among them. Though watchers beware… Noé is not here to trip-sit you.

Related Recs:

Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

Uchu, Nippon, Setagaya, The Fishmans

Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby Jr. // Darren Aronofsky