Enter the Void review

Enter the Void (18, 143 mins)
Director: Gaspar Noé
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

It’s not often you begin to despise a film during its opening credits, but Enter the Void begins with a flashing, thumping, endless sequence that gives a good idea of the neon seizure that’s to follow. For the first couple of reels the camera is the eyes of a young American man in Tokyo, who takes and deals drugs and visits friends before being killed by cops in a nightclub. The film then becomes even more hallucinogenic, eventually teasing out a fragmented story of sorts about the guy and how his sister, who has followed him to Tokyo, ends up working as a prostitute. Enter the Void is more sensory assault than movie, a drug-fuelled kaleidoscope of strobing lights (at one point the screen convulses white for a full minute), with a swirling, hovering camera that can go through walls and inside bodies. The effect is nauseating, like being vomited on while on a rollercoaster and it’s one for people who like their cinema with an overdose of breathtaking pretentiousness matched only by unendurable tedium.