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Film pioneer Dziga Vertov once said: “I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see;” writer-director Gaspar Noé has taken Vertov’s concept of “Kino-Glaz” (Cine-Eye) to it’s logical culmination. Enter the Void takes place entirely from the perspective of its main character, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown). Between Noé and cinematographer Benoît Debie, the camera becomes a transient spectre, drifting untethered around, over, and through the skyline of contemporary Tokyo. The viewer isn’t just made to see what Oscar sees; incredibly, anyone watching is forced to feel all of the natural and synthetic highs that distort Oscar’s perceptions. It’s impossible to convey the level of trance that watching this film induces. Each visual distortion, each optic trick, draws in and arrests the viewer to a level I’d previously imagined impossible.

Its visual mastery alone makes Enter the Void a great film. This said, the actual narrative story does have some serious flaws- Oscar is a drug dealer and his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) is a stripper; an abundance of flashbacks make it quite clear that both have led very tragic lives. Linda’s codependence issues are romanticized rather than confronted and neither character has any clear purpose or ambition in any of their actions. Each character seems completely numb to their surroundings and none aim to find any purpose amid their existence. While the interactions between the characters are very dramatic, there’s a very apparent lack of complexity. Even in private the characters refuse to exude any sort of personality. As they meander around Tokyo, these traumatized drugged-out patsies react to many things, but seldom act when not provoked to do so.

-Paul Brinnel