Gaspar Noe's movies combine style, substance, and themes that make them unique. Enter the Void like Irreversible before it starts you in the middle of a story all centering around one event that brings consequences for everyone involved. Both deal with themes of pregnancy and someone losing a baby, trauma, grief, and bereavement. The second half deals with the consequences of that event and Noe takes you on a 2001-type of journey with overhead camera angles, bright LSD-ridden colors, and psychosexual processes of the creation of life, and the afterlife. While the second half does get a bit exhausting with the style over substance, the first half had me so immersed because of the first-person perspective that I thought I could experience what was in the movie. Compare that to a movie like Mandy where I actually thought I had to be on drugs in order to enjoy it. At its core an interesting story about a brother and sister, though Noe even makes that something a bit more perverse than you would expect. I like the audacity he has to make stylish movies about people who aren't all good or bad.
Synopsis: This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
The first part of the movie follows Oscar in the final hours of his life before is killed by the police. Irreversible starts a little more toward the middle whereas this is closer to the end of the chronology. What I enjoy is how there are hints of things throughout the story, past and future established early on. Oscar talks about Victor not wanting to come there because of what happened with his Mom. Foreshadowing for two different reasons. Oscar and Linda have an aytycical brother-sister relationship. I thought that from the beginning when Alex eventually said Linda was Oscar's sister, I was like sister? That foreshadows things to come as their relationship is a bit more sketchy than at first glance.
What I enjoyed early on was being in Oscar's thoughts. I get more immersed in the movie because of that. When he does drugs and starts feeling the effects of those drugs, and seeing the things he sees I feel like I am experiencing that. So many trippy movies approach this in a way that is alienating to me where I feel like I have to be doing drugs in order to experience the film in a positive way. I never get detached from this movie, especially when it is told from Oscar's perspective. While I've never done psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs, the things he sees while on these drugs are things you would see while having an ocular migraine, or just opening your eyes or opening your eyes in the sun. Mixes of colors, different weird images like blinking dots mixed with scientific diagrams of chromosomes. Images like that. Hearing Oscar's thoughts about how the drugs are taking effect is interesting.
Some of the scenes of Oscar and Alex (Cyril Roy) walking through the streets of Tokyo are fun. Again, it makes me feel like I'm really walking through Tokyo. I enjoy seeing cultural things that are different there, than they are here. The different looking vending machines, the colors of some lights and the Japanese and English language displayed on certain signs was cool to see. Oscar's death scene gives me a lot of anxiety because in the first person view I feel like I am him about to die. Hearing his thoughts about what to do and what he will do is interesting. I couldn't think much like he probably couldn't while watching that scene.
After that scene the camera becomes much more of its own character. Noe has other moments in his movies like this. The opening to Irreversible is one of those where the camera feels like just as much of a character as anyone else. In this movie Noe cheats in a way. The camera is literally Oscar's spirit from the afterlife. The overhead camera angles are interesting. Noe's penchant for the spinning camera and 360 angles are shown in certain scenes. Notably in the scene with Linda dancing at the strip club. Some of the colors are nice to see. Not just in Oscar's drug trips but also the scenes with the different colored strobe lights and pyrotechnics at the club.
Some of the examples of the color pallet you can find in this movie.
I like where the movie goes after Oscar's death story wise. The issues come in where Noe is doing too much style over substance. At a certain point I got a little exhausted of the Call-of-Duty-spectator-mode camera angles. The camera goes through walls of buildings always overhead and into the nearest element of energy it can find. Some of the scenes toward the end of the spirit just going from room to room in the love hotel just went on too long. At 143 minutes, and 161 minutes for the even longer version I didn't see this feels too long. Climax doesn't have nearly as effective of a story or characters but I do think Noe was able to rein himself in a little more for that movie. What I did like about the second half is seeing how everyone was impacted by Oscar's death.
Spoiler Section
I like any story where long lost relatives or friends are able to see each other after a long time. Seeing the parents car accident and then Oscar and Linda being separated in foster care really tugged at the heartstrings. Seeing them meet again later after Oscar starts dealing drugs to get her a plane ticket was satisfying. They had made a blood pact to always be together as kids and as adults while still together, they are apart. Oscar gets mad one night when Linda returns from the club, a club he was banned from because he was trying to sell drugs to the girls. Yet Oscar doesn't want Linda seeing the owner of the club, Mario. Linda kisses Oscar a lot and talks about how much she misses him and accuses him of being jealous when he gets mad. The sexual tension in their relationship is manifested more in how she acts toward him but he never seems to fight how physical she gets with him. Linda doesn't like Alex that much or so it would seem. Oscar's death actually brings those two closer together. Even a character like Victor (Olly Alexander) is one I feel more sympathy for because by the end of the story he has no one. Sometimes being responsible for a person's death is just as bad as being the killer yourself. He has to live with his own actions and despair.
In closing, Noe is doing some very 2001 things with this movie. The long sections of a camera following colors. 2001: A Space Odyssey is about life and death through evolution. This is about life and death through sex and nurturing in a way. The many scenes of Oscar breastfeeding from his mother, and then flashing back to that later when he is with Victor's mom is not lost on me. The scenes of him waking up naked next to his sister and all of those scenes with his mother give this movie a very Freudian quality to the psychosexuality. I'm not sure what all of it means. The ending though made me think of something I've heard many times. When someone dies, someone else is born. Or someone is born for however many people that die. Oscar's spirit also seems to get peace, but also reincarnation through Linda and Alex conceiving a child. When Linda gets an abortion the spirit can't move on. Just like so many sci-fi movies though the reality could be quite simpler. Oscar likes DMT. Bruno, the drug dealer eventually talks about the high of DMT only lasting a few minutes and being a near death experience. Alex's Tibetan book of the dead is on Oscar's mind when he does the drug. Could that mean that this whole movie is a trip? I don't know. It is interesting to think about. The fact that the acid colors that he has seen at Alex's apartment are on his mind as well is something to think about. Yes it is cool stylistically to have those colors for the love hotel but it also could mean something in the movie. I was a little detached in the second half without Oscar's inner thoughts but I still liked the style, though it gets exhausting. I really enjoyed the subtext and trying to interpret it.
Rating: 7.5/10
Trivia: Most of the dialogue was improvised by the cast as Gaspar Noe didn't understand english well.
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