UK Release Date: 24-09-2010
UK Certificate: TBC
Director: Gaspar Noé
Country: France/Germany/Italy, 2009

Gaspar Noé's first two films, I Stand Alone (1998) and Irreversible (2002), have left an indelible impression on film history. His latest, Enter the Void, may prove to be an embarrassing stain left behind on a cinema seat.

Set amongst Tokyo’s ex-pat community, the film follows a young American brother (Nathaniel Brown) and sister (Paz de la Huerta) as they scrape out a life together – him dealing drugs and her dancing at a sex club. Their story is told through a series of meandering flashbacks, experienced by the brother's dislodged soul as it enters the bardo between death and rebirth, as described (sort of) in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

There’s much to commend here, particularly the swooping out-of-body camera work and some hypnotic effects sequences that deploy animations, models and lots of tilt-shifted aerial shots to recreate the impression of a mind at-large. But, after a rivetingly in-your-face title sequence and an intriguing, actively psychedelic opening, the film swiftly goes down the plughole, literally, and disappears into its cast’s heaving orifices.

After an hour or so the film’s obsession with Tokyo seediness and its protagonists’ descent into sexual chaos begins to feel like a prurient tabloid travel advisory. Without a strong narrative anchor, the visual flourishes that thrilled in the first half soon become exhausting, while the combination of some weak central performances and an uninteresting storyline that takes an extremely long time to go nowhere in particular makes for a singularly draining experience.

Enter the Void is a daring film, certainly, but one gets the sense that if someone had pulled Noé down from the clouds then a genuinely visionary, hallucinogenic film could have been assembled from 90 minutes (or less) of what’s on display here. Instead we’re left with something that’s aimless on a cosmic scale and ultimately becomes the cinematic equivalent of a tedious hippy trying too hard to impress with tales of sexual and psychedelic conquest. Enter at your own risk.