With Jim Sabatini

Enter The Void

Rated: NR
Reviewed by: Jim
Release date: September 24, 2010	Released by: IFC Films

Another creative, if disturbing cinematic trek from Gaspar Noe is Enter The Void.
 
This Japan-based sweeping drama features Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta and Cyril Roy told through Brown's young adult and drug-addled Oscar living in a small Tokyo apartment. His sister, Linda (de la Huerta), makes a living as a nightclub dancer in the bustling metropolis.
 
A hellish, if exhilarating concentricity develops after the police raid the eponymous sleazy club while Oscar is in cahoots with buddy Alex (Roy) and hooking up with Victor (Olly Alexander) there. What fatefully follows provides for an out of body experience with swirling hues amid an episodic, even flash-backing narrative.
 
Noe brought a similar visceral stream-of-consciousness to his controversial Irreversible with emotions here gravitating from subtext doled out as it's hard not to feel an aural and visual magnetism. The approach with notions of reincarnation might feel like a nod to outre prolific auteurs like Stanley Kubrick. 
 
This bold French/Argentinian helmer packs plenty in nearly every frame even if it feels a little too much of the same in the latter-going. Enter The Void plays like a passionate, nuanced ruse from some interesting time-lapse credits to an incredible conclusion. One is "with" Oscar, roaming and hovering that can be scary and painful, whether regarding his parents, a brothel, or one of Linda's clients.
 
It almost seems at times like a surprising, intermittently tedious, lurid, and animated Someone To Watch Over Me with de la Huerta fine behind the fulcrum embodied through Brown. The result may be too demanding in a persecuting way, but it has the ability to astonish in its unusual manner of self-discovery.