'Enter the Void': Noé creates cinematic roller coaster

Sex, drugs, and death—Gaspar Noé isn’t famous for sugarcoating the facts of life. In the auteur’s new film, “Enter the Void,” the audience experiences the psychedelic journey of life and death through the eyes of Oscar, a drug-dealing young American living among the neon lights of Tokyo. As Oscar falls deeper down the rabbit hole of his mind, Noé takes viewers of his film into a world stranger and more real than most would care to explore.

“Enter the Void” is the tale of Oscar and Linda, portrayed by lesser-known actors Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta, siblings who are reunited several years after the tragic death of their parents in a car accident. Connected by more than just genetics, Oscar promises Linda that he will never leave her and, after his death in a drug deal gone bad, he remains tied to her existence, watching forever from above. Drawing inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a book that Oscar is given prior to his death, Noé’s film meditates on the seemingly meaningless cycle of life, a perpetual journey with no end.

Beginning with an opening credits sequence that resembles a pulsating light show, accompanied by a techno drone loud enough to make ears bleed, Noé makes it clear from the start that “Enter the Void” is not only a film, but an experience. Told in three parts, scenes are filmed from the sight perspective of Oscar during the events prior to his death, from the back of his head in flashbacks to his past, and from an aerial view after his death. Huerta is the driving emotional force of the film, pulling viewers in with her effortless portrayal of a playfully seductive stripper who grieves for the only family she had left.

Known for his experimentation with cinematography, Noé constructs a cinematic world that encases the viewer in a hypnotic cocoon . When Oscar takes hallucinogenic drugs, the audience watches as the screen is distorted by his psychedelic fantasies. When their parents are killed, the audience is in the car with them as an eighteen-wheeler collides into the windshield. And when Oscar dies, the viewer, seeing as he sees, dies with him.

The entrancing cinematic style that Noé so carefully constructs, however, is ultimately his downfall. While the film maintains a level of excitement and imaginative storytelling, it falls apart in the last half hour, languishing in dizzying aerial shots and a scene so frankly sexual that it had many audience members gasping in their seats.

Like a roller coaster, the film leaves the viewer with a feelings of both nausea and accomplishment. At times eerie, at times heartbreaking, and at times absolutely absurd, “Enter the Void” will take the viewer into the darkest depths of the human experience, whether they like it or not.