Cannes 2009: Gaspar Noé’s ‘Enter The Void’ Nightmare Is Visually Ambitious, But Convoluted, Meandering and Pretentious?

The day we were leaving Cannes, we already caught wind that Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” was hit and miss for many people, and figured that Gilliam’s ‘Doctor Parnassus’ would probably be uneven as well, so on our way to the airport, our most anticipated film of the festival was Gaspar Noé’s “Enter The Void,” a “psychedelic melodrama”/surrealistic nightmare-sounding picture about a man who is shot and killed, but refuses to leave the earth because of the promise he has made to protect his sister (Paz de la Huerta).

The A/V Club’s Mike D’Angelo noted that the film, as we suggested earlier last week, was finished at the last minute and screened at Cannes in a not-quite-finished form. He also said it ran nearly three hours. And apparently its visually astonishing (and perhaps vertiginous). “Basically, the entire movie is shot like Irreversible’s brief scene transitions, with the camera constantly hurtling, swooping, diving through solid matter—at one point Noé sends us high into the sky and then into a moving plane—or simply floating above people’s heads like an impotent deity.” However, the visuals can’t save the picture.

“If only the movie’s moronic content didn’t keep distracting you from its exhilarating form. ‘Void’ has no characters of interest, apart from Noé’s camera—which would be fine if his camera weren’t constantly observing bad actors delivering crappy improvised dialogue. (Paz de la Huerta seems to get cast in movies solely because she’s willing to get naked at the drop of a lens cap.) The film’s ending, which I won’t spoil, comes across as silly and fatuous mostly because it’s so clumsily foreshadowed.”

The New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis seems to like the ambitious accomplishment. “Although he remains dedicated to shaking up viewers, to getting under their skin and into their nervous systems, Mr. Noé has mellowed. Despite its unpromising title, ‘Void’ …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.” [ed. though note we’re told that in one review, possibly not this one, Dargis spoils the ending, so beware when reading the Times and thoughts on ‘Void’].

“The film tells a simple story in a needlessly convoluted fashion,” says Movieline’s David Bouregois who also says the acting is “atrocious” (note there are a few non-actors in the film). “Noé shows none of the excellent flourishes he used in Irreversible: the clever and effective use of flashbacks and reverse chronological storytelling used to weave the gripping story of a Paris woman savagely raped. Instead, we get a laughable and pointless mélange of flashbacks leading up to the shooting (which yields the following information: Oscar was a drug dealer), and scene upon scene of spectacularly colorful drug-induced hallucinations.”

Variety just hammers the film for its artiness. “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.” The trade also suggests since Noe delivered a dripping-wet new print of the film, it might be back to the editing room for him.

The Hollywood Reporter isn’t much kinder, suggests it’s self-indulgent to the hilt and calls it, ” virtually unwatchable” especially at its 160 minute length (surely it’s going to get cut down now unless Noe is that uncompromising which is possible). “Unfortunately, Noe has shown that while remaining just as self-consciously controversial, he has succumbed to the many unfounded rumors about his own brilliance.”

Time Out New York’s Stephen Garett seems to wholeheartedly dislike the film, but admires the craft. “A massive narrative failure with simplistic plot devices, subpar acting and a droning structural approach that begs to be not trimmed but amputated, Void nevertheless represents some of the most inventive filmmaking at the fest.”

ScreenDaily suggest stoner kids will love it and we admit, inspite of all these largely negative thoughts, we’re largely intrigued still. “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…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.”

The artier crowd seems to dig it which suggest we too might find value in it. Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker says, “Gaspar Noé’s ‘Enter the Void’ is disquieting and dreamy, as much a psychologically charged space as it is a conventional film narrative. Noe’s decadent Tokyo riff on the Tibetan Book of the Dead is structured around births, a death, and finds its twists through hypnotic tracking shots, strobe-lit effects and vertiginous clockwheeled pans. The film conceives its own sense of filmic structure, which makes the criticism that it’s too long a bit puzzling to me. In that the consciousness of the protagonist becomes largely inaccessible to the viewer in the film’s second half, I suppose this section is challenging, but to me that’s where its eeriest psychological moments are. I liked it a lot.”

We’re still fascinated by the sounds of it, even if it is a big failure, it sounds like a spectacularly audacious one. One things for certain though it sounds like mainstream crowds and critics (perhaps those that loathed an equally arty, “The Limits of Control,” probably won’t be able to tolerate this one either, but then again Noe’s audience has always been super niche and small and this won’t change. It’s probably back to the editing room for the hallucinatory-sounding picture as well, but one assume it’ll still be over two hours in length. When’s it coming out? Sometime in 2009 hopefully.

Update: Eric Kohn for The Wrap, via Jeffrey Wells has high praise for its audacious originality and honestly his sentiments sounds like a reason we too might love a film. “Ultimately, the winners of the main competition represent just one part of the festival equation,” he writes. “The grandest Cannes event, as far as I’m concerned, arrived on Friday afternoon at the premiere of Gasper Noe’s Enter the Void. This two-and-a-half hour opus needs to be scaled down a bit, but there’s no doubt that the movie represents a highly unique viewing experience. Noe forces his audience to contemplate major themes about life after death with a tricky formalism that exists on a plane of its own. Is it the ‘best’ movie at Cannes? No, but it sure did help keep the energy flowing at the very end. For those lucky enough to have seen it, the appeal speaks for itself.”