Enter the Void (Soudain le vide) (2009)
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 83
Fresh: 60 | Rotten: 23
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Critic Reviews: 20
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 11,300
My Rating
Movie Info
ENTER THE VOID, the psychedelic thriller by visionary French maverick Gaspar Noé (IRREVERSIBLE, I STAND ALONE), is a cinematic thrill ride that's riveted audiences at the Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and SXSW film festivals. Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta star in a visceral journey set against the thumping, neon club scene of Tokyo, which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life, death, and the universally wonderful and horrible moments between. An immersive and just plain
Sep 24, 2010 Limited
Jan 25, 2011
$0.3M
IFC Films
Watch It Now
Cast
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Nathaniel Brown
Oscar -
Paz de la Huerta
Linda -
Cyril Roy
Alex -
Emily Alyn Lind
Linda Enfant, Little Li... -
Jesse Kuhn
Little Oscar, Oscar Enf... -
Olly Alexander
Victor -
Masato Tanno
Mario -
Cary Hayes
Bruno -
Sarah Stockbridge
Suzie -
Sakiko Fukuhara
Saki -
Nobu Imai
Tito -
Emi Takeuchi
Carol -
Janice Sicotte-Beliveau
Mother -
Simon Chamberland
Father -
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All Critics (83) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (61) | Rotten (24) | DVD (2)
In visual terms, it's a whiz-bang marvel of swooping and soaring camera work and psychedelic imagery, lit by the gaudy fluorescence of Tokyo's seamier nightclubs.
Top CriticIf you yourself are stoked for a lurid, oversexed, stupid-with-Freud Midnight Movie extravaganza -- a trip to El Topo via Mulholland Drive -- there are worse ways to spend 2 1/2 hours.
"I hated that" will be a common refrain among people leaving showings of Enter the Void. Don't be surprised, though, if you find yourself still thinking about the movie the next day.
[It's] certainly an immersive experience that's decidedly difficult to shake. The problem is that it's also the most excruciating sit in recent cinematic memory.
As chowderheaded as some of its underlying pretensions are, the movie's still an astonishing work of cinema, alternately brilliant and disgusting, naïve and inspired, tedious and sublime.
Hallucinogenic, dazzling, depressing, daring and not entirely successful, "Enter the Void" is obviously out to blow some minds.
Broken down to its base elements, it's a detective-ghost story, not unlike M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999), albeit one driven by some dazzling filmmaking bravado.
This is what it feels like when a movie kicks you in the face.
The discipline on display here, to stick with concept and to execute it with consistency, is intense and considerable.
If Irréversible was Noé's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enter the Void is his Pink Floyd laser show.
... somewhere between an out-of-body experience and a nightmarish trance.
This is a film about... um ... life and death, we'll guess, and it involves a minor drug dealer, his sister, their dead parents and some cronies in Japan.
Noé's latest, Enter The Void, is just as ugly and cruel as his previous features but comes coated in a sheen of psychedelia and spirituality.
...if you think last year's 'Avatar' broke boundaries, for every breakthrough James Cameron's film offers technologically, Noé's film does artistically.
It's an exploitation art film about a spiritual undertaking of the afterlife, as seen through the eyes of a druggie.
Liquefies screen space in ways usually reserved for experimental animators
Love it or loathe it, you'll respect its ambition.
There is a line between mind-blowing and mind-numbing, and Noe crosses it early.
...like absolutely nothing you've ever seen in the cinema before.
"Enter the Void" isn't a movie. It's an illegal substance ingested through the senses.
"Enter the Void" is banal, melodramatic, repetitive, monotonous and dull. As Oscar's junkie-artist guru, Cyril Roy is really very good. But we spend far too much time following the back of Oscar's head.
Audience Reviews for Enter the Void (Soudain le vide)
Super Reviewer
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- Oscar: If she ever gets pregnant, I'll kill the baby. I swear to God.
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- Alex: The drug guy, he's a dirty bastard you know. Yeah, he likes boys.
- Oscar: Who is this?
- Linda: Bruno, the guy that gave me drugs. Don't even take a drink. You take a drink, you might wake up two days later with his shit in your mouth, you know. [pause] Or your own shit, you know. I should be able to get him to see you today but I won't come back with you so you should be careful. You know what his new trick is? He can't even be turned on by fucking now, so what he does is...
- Oscar: [looking over the balcony] Hey... I'm not gonna *jump* from here, am I?
- Alex: Hey, once a new guy gives him a blowjob, yeah, he sticks his finger inside his own ass, and then he wipes his finger on the back of their head. So they walk around with shit on their hair.
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- Linda: This thing is not my brother.
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- Oscar: Do you remember that pact we made? We promised to never leave each other.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Pulsating, hypnotic, vapid? | 8 days ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- Enter the Void (DE)
- Enter the Void (UK)
Since his first feature film to date his body of work is something completely different from the typical stuff film theatres are playing today. Unfortunately too many people these days don't wanna challange them selves. Sadly too often people choose to see safe entertainment instead films that has true vision and something original to show. And i cannot entirely blame them for that. It is a easy way out and there will always be more audience for that kind of cinema than there will ever be for films like Enter the Void. But for me films have always been a artform. They should make you feel or think. Even if they take you to the darkest places imaginable.
Enter the Void is a film for people who like to be challanged. For example the first time i saw it i did not even know what to think of it. It took almost a week for me, and a second viewing, to fully embrace it's greatness. It is an experience like no other. There is no certain words to describe it. Maybe it is not even meant to be explained. It is actually more like an journey through dreams, hallucinations, memories and inner space. A trip like no other.
There are moments of pure visual feast and moments of pure terror here. There are also elements that work and elements that does not. It mixes so many different elements and feelings together that it is impossible to describe the impact of it all. All i can say is that you have to open your mind for it and let it take you for a ride into the unknown. You possibly will need more than one viewing experience to make up your mind completely. I certainly did.
This is a film like no other. There has never been a film like this before and i doubt that there will ever be again. Noe is taking risks here like fwe other directors has taken in their whole careers and i admire him for that.
Sit back, open your mind and let Gaspar Noe take take you in for a ride. Enter the Void is a experience you will not foget.