Enter the Void

Gaspar Noé saw Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake in his early twenties and decided then that any film he made about the afterlife would be shot in the first person. He worked on the script for 15 years. Tokyo won out for its colour and because Japan’s drug laws explain the hero’s fear of the police. Nathaniel Brown, who plays Oscar, was not a professional, cast for his resemblance to Paz de la Huerta so the two would pass as siblings. The 100-page script held almost no dialogue and the lines were improvised on set. Tokyo work ended late in 2007 and the flashbacks were shot in Montreal the following spring. In those flashbacks Noé drops the pure point of view and keeps Oscar’s head and shoulders in frame. The US and UK prints dropped the seventh of the film’s nine reels; Noé had promised investors a shorter cut if it ran long. Sitges gave it the special jury award and the cinematography prize; Neuchatel named it best film. A good fit if you want a film built on vantage point rather than incident, and can take the camera riding behind one head. Not for viewers sensitive to light; the flickering patterns carry a risk of seizures, and the sexual content and drug use are explicit.