Go with the gut. My gut feeling was I would be disappointed. My stomach didn’t let me down as I was hungry for another magnificent Gaspar Noé film and didn’t get it. Nonetheless in certain ways
Enter the Void, Noé’s latest, is brilliant. First off, the opening credits, This rapid pulsating strobe light show could be played off the wall at any dance club. Second, the camera work and special effects. No doubt about it this film is pretty dazzling, a kaleidoscope of manic colour shot in the dreamlike neon of contemporary Tokyo. And it takes film to places it previously has not been – overhead angled shots, floating and speeding scenes that glide the viewer above rooftops and streets of the dense and maze-like city. But the story, which lasts roughly two-and-a-half hours, is very simple. And that’s part of the movie’s problem. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown in his first major movie role) is a young American drug dealer. He finally makes enough cash that he can afford to fly his sister from the US to join him. The two are exceptionally close having made a blood pact when kids never to leave one another, which ends up occurring anyway after their parents are killed. She (Linda played exceptionally by Paz de la Huerta,
Boardwalk Empire) soon finds work as an exotic dancer. In one of the early scenes Oscar and his drug-dealing pal Alex (Cyril Roy) wander to a club called, appropriately, The Void, where Oscar is to make a drug deal. The club is raided. Oscar locks himself in the bathroom flushing drugs down the toilet. He tells police he has a gun. They shoot him through the bathroom door. He falls to the floor and dies. For the next two or so hours the movie is about Oscar post-mortem as his spirit is released from his body but his consciousness lives in a supernatural form as it swoops or hovers above Tokyo rooftops or inside buildings. He visits and revisits those once important to him – people like Linda and Alex – as well as returning to the scene of the crime as he watches police finish their investigation, put his body in an ambulance, and his later identification at the morgue. There are flashbacks to his earlier life. These are some of the film’s more interesting scenes. We see him and his sister being coddled as babies and joyfully loved as children by their middle class Manhattan parents. There’s a cherished scene at the beach followed by a horrific car crash – witnessed from the kids in the car’s back seat – that instantly kills their parents. That scene, repeated a number of times throughout the film, is jarringly, sickeningly authentic. So, even in the afterlife, Oscar never “leaves” his sister, true to their earlier pact. But Linda, of course, doesn’t know this. Oscar’s spirit has no way of communicating with her, which seems a flaw in the story’s premise. The film, even during when Oscar is alive, is shot from his perspective, as we literally look out through his eyes. Post-mortem that’s also the case. Oscar’s disembodied spirit’s view is ours as it hovers above people or moves through walls or indeed zooms through objects, usually bright lights or hole-like cavities. While sometimes dazzling, the movie is repetitive, even boring at times. And there is no real developing plot. Two-thirds of the film is either Oscar revisiting people who he had dealings with – and how his death plays out in their lives, usually miserably - or flashbacks to his childhood. The “Void,” of course, is death. And his death is exactly like a book he had been reading, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, said it would be. Besides the film’s monotony and weak plot there are some clichéd "hey-man-what-a-cool-acid-trip" scenes. Nevertheless you have to applaud Noé’s exceptionally ambitious cinematography and his efforts, once again, to take film to a new level, as he did with comparatively standard efforts like
Irreversible (2002) and
I Stand Alone (1998). Even if you see
Enter the Void once (you probably won’t want to see it a second time!) if you’re interested in the outer boundaries of filmmaking today, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Montreal festivals continue: They don’t call Montreal festival city for nothing. The Brazilian film festival is currently on. It’s in its fourth year and features 10 films......And from Dec. 10-23, 17 Charlie Chaplin movies in restored prints from Janus Films will be screened including less well known ones like
The Idle Class and
A King in New York. Alas, I will be back in Windsor by that time.
Three nights, three movies, as I continue my late autumn sojourn in Canada’s most interesting city.....On Monday I took in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (with French sub-titles, a first!), a movie generally disliked by critics, who called it a retread of all-too-familiar Allen themes of life and love by oh-so-modern characters. Particular complaints were that it was “joyless,” (one reviewer) and “empty, soulless” (another). So I was geared to be a little underwhelmed. But, after all, this is Allen. And even his worst efforts have some redeeming qualities. But the surprise was that I thoroughly enjoyed the film, hanging on to every moment. No, it was hardly Woody’s best. And, yes, the story is familiar. But did I care? Allen’s topics of love and romance have been favourites with all sorts of directors and writers down through time. But more important was that this movie dealt with the idea of illusion. In fact it’s a modern morality tale. There were good performances by British stalwart Gemma Jones (the film is another by Allen set in London), Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Antonio Banderas. And I even laughed at Anthony Hopkins’s rather stock Alfie character.....On Tuesday I visited the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, the Forum. And, yes, it is to shed a tear over what has become of the hockey shrine. Several years ago it was converted to make way for AMC’s 20-screen behemoth cineplex. Now the Habs play at the Bell Centre further downtown. Nothing against AMC. And the developers took some pains to preserve a few sections of old Forum seats outside the cinemas. There’s even a faceoff circle presumably where centre ice used to be, now used by neighbourhood break dancers. In any case, there I watched Copacabana (Marc Fitoussi) starring Isabelle Huppert as mom Babou and Lolita Chammah as daughter Esméralda. Much has been made about the usually dramatic Huppert putting a smile on her face and acting in a comedy. But, as is obvious in this film, she’s so talented she could be in any role. In fact I’d argue the film well captures her personality which is offbeat, irreverent and, yes, funny. But Copacabana is more dramatic than how it’s been portrayed. Babou is a Sixties flower child who remains a free spirit to her Gen X daughter’s conformity. Yes, the story has been done before. But the interaction between mother and daughter isn’t the highpoint. It’s more the film's character study of Babou herself.....Last night I returned to the AMC Forum to see Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney, Who Killed the Electric Car?). This film has great effects sometimes seeming like a drama. And it was a surprise to see Spitzer cooperate in the making of it. I liked the fact the movie wasn’t overly politically partisan and showed Spitzer’s good points (caped crusader against Wall Street corruption as New York State’s Attorney General) and bad (deceiving his family by seeking out liaisons with a high-priced call girl). The most interesting part of it, though, were the questions raised about who put government investigators on to Spitzer, suggesting it was his Republican political enemies..... I’ll see no movie tonight as I have a family dinner out on the town.....But tomorrow I return to Cinema du Parc to catch the highly anticipated (for me) Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé’s latest. I think Noé is the most interesting director working today as evidenced by his mesmerizing films I Stand Alone and Irreversible. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Detroit’s repertory Burton Theatre is screening what it’s calling its Urban ScreenPlay Film Series this month at the former elementary school turned funky art house on the city’s venerable Cass Avenue..... (Alert to Windsorites – despite the belief that Cass is the most dangerous street in Detroit, it isn’t. Far from it. You might see people who are down-and-out begging for money but it’s hardly a place you’re likely to get mugged. In fact, with some of the bars and restos along Cass’s several blocks, the street makes for a rather colourful thoroughfare.)......The series started last weekend. This weekend it features a double bill called The Psychedelic Experience with Coming Back for More: The Search for Sly Stone, and Space Is the Place, about the late great avant-gardist Sun Ra.....On Nov. 27 & 28 the theme is Challenging the Status Quo. The first film is Keep on Walking: Joshua Nelson, the Jewish Gospel Singer, followed by Am I Black Enough for You.....The Burton is at 3420 Cass, just south of Martin Luther King Blvd. Its web site is http://www.burtontheatre.com/
Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami has Juliette Binoche and English opera star William Shimell (he doesn’t sing) in this tale of attraction, introspection, philosophy and meditation on life and relationships. Reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, a man and woman – seemingly strangers - meet and spend several hours walking the bucolic landscape and timeless villages of Tuscany. As the movie progresses the identity of the two changes in terms of what each means to the other. Or does it? This movie was utterly absorbing.....Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love has Tilda Swinton as Emma Recchi, wife of the inherited owner of a huge Milan linen factory. Her character breaks out of her bourgeois family through a personal romantic obsession, a story paralleling the fall of the company’s fortunes. This is an elegantly-made film with strong studied visual shots and a fantastic music score which underlines the film’s sophisticated look. But it’s a weak story that seems less than convincing.
