FFF Review: ENTER THE VOID

Its shadow was tall, and hard to miss. Its cry was heard through streets and bedrooms. Film cried I AM ALIVE, and Gaspar Noé listened.

There is not one single frame in this film that is wasted, no shot that lingers too long, no second that can be cut out. As brilliant, as loving, as torturous, as brutal, as honest, as unique, as through and through genius as ENTER THE VOID is has nothing been for a very long time. before I continue, I must say this: ENTER THE VOID is what the title suggests! You enter a world of its own, and even when the film is over, you are still in this world - it changes your way of consciousness, your way of seeing thins, of feeling things.

The film opens with reel 1, in which our hero Oscar is in his apartment - the entire first reel has no visible cut. We are inside of Oscar, seeing what he sees, hearing his thoughts, our vision only obscured of some 2, 3 black frames each time he blinks. We learn that Oscar lives with his sister Linda (of whose boyfriend he is jealous), that he is a drug dealer and user. As Linda leaves, he smokes a drug (is it DMT, the drug that sets free a chemical the brain produces when somebody dies?) and we gaze with him at what he experiences: flowers and insects made of light, color, energy.

His telephone rings: he has to supply somebody in a bar. He tries to come down... a friend - Alex - rings his doorbell, and he lets him in. The two talk about the tibetan book of the dead (which Alex lend to m... to Oscar) and as we... the two walk through the streets of Tokyo, we gaze at the flashing neon lights around us, ponder what dying may be like, enjoy the last haze of the high...

But once at the club, something is wrong. There are screams... police?? I flee to the toilet, grab the drugs, try to flush them but some fall around the toilet and why doesn't it flush oh shit just take the pills and throwthemintherew hilsththepolicebangsatthedo orandfuckfuckfuckWHYD OESN'TITFLUSHWhyitflushesthankgod thewindownthewindowwon'topenit'sblockedhofuckinpolicethwwin

I am shot...

I am bleeding...

shotwhatsgoingonshiwashotbytheposho...

As the first reel ends, we die. With Oscar. We are with his soul now - no more thoughts, no more blinking. Where are we? Oh, above our body... where to go... Linda!! Where is she?? We fly over Tokyo, looking for Linda... entering the strip club she dances at, flying over the strippers, gazing at their naked bodies, entering rooms, leaving them, looking for Linda, finally finding her... there she is, not answering her phone... Alex must be calling her, he got away, he saw our body, he knows... but Linda, she is busy with her boyfriend, naked now, as we come closer to her body... enter that of her boyfriend, seeing through his eyes... feeling?? Felling... I can't feel, just see...

Where to go now? Past?? Present?? Future?? It all blurs, thoughts seem to get me into the situations I am thinking of, standing behind my back, gazing over my own shoulder... still looking for Linda, where is she? Where is Alex? Flying over the city, searching, searching... because there was a pact, a pact to never leave Linda, even after death, watch over her, stay with her, protect her...

As we follow the soul, no, BECOME the soul, we do nothing more or less than overlook a life... many lives. We do not just gaze at flat psychedelic effects, drug hallucinations, naked bodies or ponder buddhist philosophies, we are living another life. We experience something that is not us, yet it becomes us. The film manages what hundreds of thousands of films tried to achieve yet failed, and succeeds. ENTER THE VOID is far from being cynical, far from being dumb, far from being style over substance - the substance is a life (tell me how anything can be more substantial?)!! And we learn how beautiful life is, how unique.

Long after the film has ended, you will still be in its world, only slowly coming down, though you will have the feeling of being in Oscar's body, of seeing the world as presented in ENTER THE VOID. 48 hours after, I've still not come down from this film, my brain still trying to cope with all the images.

But there is one thing certain to me: ENTER THE VOID is a one time experience that no other film will ever come close to. It is possibly the best film of the decade, and because I am still speechless (even though I discuss the film with dozens of people - all as amazed by the film as I was, one of them director Christopher Smith -, after getting a handshake and signatures by Gaspar Noé, after hearing what he's had to say about the film), I can only give this film the rating it deserved, the rating that fits it, the rating that my best friend wrote next to its entry in my festival program. It is as wonderful, as hilarious, as stupid, as grand as life is. There is nothing like it!!

Rating - 100000000000000/10