Line #131 Film/EnterTheVoid


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/enter_the_void_movie_poster_2009_1020555763.jpg]]
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3	''Enter the Void'' is an experimental art drama film co-written and directed by [[Creator/GasparNoe Gaspar Noé]], with Noé summarizing it as a "psychedelic melodrama". The entire film is seen through the UnbrokenFirstPersonPerspective of its protagonist through strict point-of-view shots, including momentary blackouts to represent blinking and extended hallucinatory sequences.
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5	A rough cut of the film premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, with the post-production required of the film delaying its wide release in France to a year later, with Germany and Italy receiving further releases across 2010 and 2011.
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7	The film opens with Oscar, a young American man, living in Tokyo and supporting himself by dealing drugs, against the advice of his sister Linda and his friend Alex, who attempts to turn Oscar toward spirituality with The Tibetan Book of the Dead. When he and Oscar leave to deliver drugs to Oscar's friend Victor, Alex [[{{Foreshadowing}} explains parts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead aloud to Oscar]] along the way -- namely how the spirit of a dead person sometimes will stay among the living until it begins to experience nightmares, after which it will attempt to reincarnate. Just as the two get to sit down at a bar, the police come to swarm the place. Oscar is chased down into the washroom stalls, where he desperately tries to flush away his incriminating drugs.
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9	He gets shot.
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11	As his spirit rises from his body and watches over the events that follow, the audience views everything from his perspective, from the aftermaths of his loved ones' lives to dreams that unveil aspects of his past.
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13	''Enter the Void'' was a long-time passion project for Noé, synthesizing a number of things he had grown fascinated by in his early life -- themes of death, existence, and the afterlife alongside aesthetics of psychedelia and surrealism. His failed initial attempts at getting sufficient funding for the film inspired the creation of ''Film/{{Irreversible}}'', which he retrospectively considered a "bank robbery" to finance ''Enter the Void'', as well as a helpful technical exercise.
14	----
15	!!This film provides examples of:
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17	* AgeGapRomance: Oscar and Linda's late mother and father are {{implied\|Trope}} to have around a 10-15 year age gap between them, since he's a somewhat older, well-off guy and she's a bit of a youthful trophy wife. After Oscar and Linda are orphaned and sent to live with their grandparents, who are implied to be their paternal grandparents, they are shown to be much too old to be taking care of kids any longer.
18	* AllJustADream:
19	** [[spoiler: At one point, Oscar wakes up in the morgue and is taken home by Linda and Alex, who are disgusted by his appearance. After a while, Alex tells Oscar to remember that he was cremated. Linda immediately wakes up, saying she had "another dream" about Oscar being alive. Essentially, Oscar flew into Linda's head and watched her own dream along with her.]]
20	** [[spoiler: According to WordOfGod, the whole movie is the result of Oscar hallucinating during his final moments because of being high on drugs.]]
21	* AnachronicOrder: Oscar flashes back and forth from his past to the present.
22	* AndYourRewardIsInfancy: The ending -- assuming it wasn't all a DyingDream.
23	* AntiVillain: Mario deals drugs, runs a strip joint, and sometimes [[spoiler:tries to cheat on Linda,]] but never forces himself on women and is genuinely concerned for her wellbeing.
24	* BigBrotherInstinct: Oscar has one for his sister. Tragically, he starts dealing drugs in order to raise money for Linda to come and live with him in Japan.
25	* {{Blipvert}}: The opening credits. Noé made the credits in this style since the film was nearly three hours and he wanted to get through "as fast as possible and as graphic as possible." Creator/QuentinTarantino even called those the best opening credits in a movie ever.
26	* BloodOath: Oscar and Linda undergo this after the death of their parents. They promise to never separate.
27	* {{Bookends}} [=/=] TitleDrop: The film properly begins with the word "ENTER" filling the screen. At the film's very ''end'', the words "THE" and "VOID" are shown in the same manner.
28	* BrokenBird: Linda, especially after Oscar dies.
29	* BrotherSisterIncest: [[IncestSubtext Heavily implied]] to be the case between Oscar and his sister since he watches her sleep ([[SleepsInTheNude in the nude no less]]) and is repeatedly shown watching her dance in the strip club. There are also several instances where she kisses him and it's a little more than a peck on the cheek. And then there's the scene where Linda leans against a wall in a suggestive pose and asks Oscar if he sees her as a woman. Aside from that, [[spoiler: Oscar flies into the bodies of her lovers while she has sex with them, watching the act from their [=POVs=]. He even flies inside of her at the climax and we get an inside view of her vagina during intercourse. Adding an extra layer of discomfort is the possibility that he's thinking of her as his mother through all this.]]
30	* CallBack: The song that ends ''{{Film/Irreversible}}'', "The End", plays over the closing credits that begin this film.
31	* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler: Linda has a nightmare in which this happens to Oscar.]]
32	* CensorSteam: Every sexual act in the Love Hotel is somewhat obscured by glowing, smokey energy waves around the genitalia.
33	* ComingAndGoing: The juxtaposition of Oscar's death while his sister was having sex with the club owner.
34	* TheCorrupter: Oscar got one of his old girlfriends and [[spoiler:Linda]] hooked on drugs with the latter falling in with a strip club manager as a direct result.
35	* CountryMatters: Alex calls Oscar one while [[spoiler: trying to convince him that he's only imagining himself as being alive again.]]
36	* CrapsackWorld: As expected from Gasper Noé. The film is dark, everyone ends up dead or broken, and nothing seems to have gotten better by the end of the film.
37	* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Both parents die in a car crash.
38	* DerangedAnimation: There is a lot of CGI animation, although it may not be noticeable since all characters are live-action.
39	* DepravedBisexual: Oscar's supplier of DMT in Tokyo is apparently fond of getting some rather young-looking men hooked on drugs while he takes advantage of them (Alex warns Oscar not to drink or smoke anything he offers). However, he's later seen enjoying an orgy that includes several women.
40	* DepthOfField: Oscar's POV sometimes has this effect.
41	* DesignStudentsOrgasm: The opening credits feature everyone's name in dramatic, colorful logos. When it gets to the cast, every name gets delirious, seizure-inducing animations in all styles imaginable.
42	* DestroyTheEvidence:
43	** Oscar tries to get rid of the drugs in the club's toilet but the flush doesn't work. So he uses his hands to push the pills down the drain.
44	** Linda burns Oscar's remaining drugs in a bucket so the police won't find them.
45	* DiesWideOpen: Oscar in the bathroom stall.
46	%%* DizzyCam: A [[CreatorThumbprint trademark]] of Gaspar Noé.
47	* DontSplitUsUp: When Oscar and Linda are separated as kids, Linda doesn't take it so well.
48	* DoubleMeaningTitle: Oscar "enters the void" by going into a club called "The Void" and dying.
49	* DroneOfDread: Oscar's POV takes this form, particularly after his death as he "chases" Alex through the streets.
50	* DrugsAreGood / DrugsAreBad: The movie shows both ends of the spectrum, the awesome trippy effects as well as the CrapsackWorld of a user.
51	* DyingDream: [[spoiler: It's possible it was all just a dream Oscar is having as he dies.]]
52	* EpicTrackingShot: At one point, the camera flies out of a window up into a plane, then all the way back down and into a taxi cab.
53	* EpilepticFlashingLights: You will not want to see this film if you have photosensitive epilepsy.
54	** The opening credits are essentially two full minutes of seizure-inducing strobing.
55	** Shortly after Oscar dies, his soul floats up into the lightbulb above the toilet, where the entire screen flickers whitish-yellow for 90 full seconds.
56	** Oscar's sister having sex with a strip club owner and subsequently getting the call about Oscar's death starts with regular lighting but quietly transitions into full-on red/blue strobing over the course of the scene's 9 minutes.
57	** As Oscar's journey continues, his perspective incorporates more and more time-altering strobes, which have a similar effect to XRayVision.
58	** This goes without mentioning the Japanese street signs and strobing club lights that pervade the film. Even ordinary lightbulbs flicker with varying intensities.
59	* EverybodyHasLotsOfSex: The climax (no pun intended) of the film involves Oscar floating through a Love Motel witnessing several acts, including his sister having very explicit sex with Alex. Additionally, almost every main character has an affair or a lover.
60	* TheFaceless: {{Subverted}}. We know what Oscar looks like because he looks at himself in the mirror at the start of the film, but during all of the flashbacks, the camera is always behind him, showing only his shoulders and the back of his head to the audience.
61	%%* FanDisservice: Intercutting scenes between Linda as a fully-grown and often nubile young woman with moments from when she was just an innocent child.
62	* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: It is implied that Oscar gets reborn as his sister's son. See GainaxEnding.
63	* FetalPositionRebirth: Yet another explanation for the ending is that [[spoiler: Oscar gets reincarnated as his sister's baby.]]
64	* FlashBack: Roughly half the movie consists of flashbacks as Oscar watches his life flash before his eyes.
65	* FlashForward: The other half moves forward in time.
66	* FlashbackCut: Integrated seamlessly into the narrative: not only does every cut find an analog with another event in Oscar's life, but the cuts themselves happen in the same manner that the blinking does in the POVCam of the first act of the film.
67	* FlushTheEvidence: The police start raiding the place, and Oscar heads for the toilet to flush down the drugs on him. A disgusting scene of him shoving the pills down the drain ensues.
68	* GainaxEnding: As one can gather from this page, the ending has a lot of interpretations. [[spoiler: After graphically showing Linda's vagina being filled with semen and a sperm cell fertilizing her ovum, the film cuts to Oscar being born. The POVCam at this point is justifiably entirely blurry, so the identity of the mother (either Oscar's actual mother or Linda) is unknowable. Of course, it may be AllJustADream, as Oscar was high on DMT when he got shot and could have been imagining the last two hours of the film.]]
69	* GetOut: How Victor's father evicts Oscar from their home.
70	* GirlOnGirlIsHot: The director treats us to a girl-on-girl scene with Linda and her friend.
71	* GoIntoTheLight: Oscar's soul tries this as soon as he dies. It ends up being the light in the bathroom stall where he was shot. He realizes this shortly thereafter.
72	%%ZCE* GoodBadGirl: Linda.
73	* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Linda receives an abortion after getting pregnant by her boss, a seedy strip club owner. Linda is emotionally damaged and living a dangerous lifestyle, and her abortion plays into that.
74	* HeartbeatSoundtrack: After Oscar is shot, there's a long shot from his perspective in the waning moments of his life as we hear his heartbeat gradually slowing.
75	* {{Homage}}: The psychedelic colors and extreme experience of it all reflects upon [[Creator/StanleyKubrick Kubrick's]] ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.
76	* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: It's suggested that Alex is drawn to Buddhist theory through the use of psychedelic drugs.
77	* IGaveMyWord: Despite his problems, Oscar promised he would always be there for Linda no matter what. [[spoiler: And if he is indeed reincarnated into Linda and Alex's baby at the end, he definitely has made good on his word]].
78	* {{Improv}}: Most of the dialogue was improvised by the cast. Gaspar Noé stated that, as he didn't understand English very much, he needed someone to tell him if what the cast was saying sounded good or not.
79	* IncestSubtext: Like with Gaspar Noe's other works, incest is a strong theme in the film, tying into concepts such as rebirth and reincarnation. Oscar's relationship with his sister Linda is disturbingly affectionate, though whether or not they actually have had sex together is never quite confirmed. It's also pretty blatant that Oscar has [[IncestSubtext a thing for his deceased mother]].
80	* JumpScare: The car crash. Notable in that the exact same camera angle (a POV from the back seat) is used ''three times''.
81	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler: Victor's mom cheats on her husband with Oscar and said affair is the reason Victor turns Oscar to the cops and eventually gets him killed. While Victor is kicked out of his house by his parents, his mom gets no punishment despite her role in the whole mess, except for the pain of losing Oscar.]]
82	* KickTheDog: Victor tries to [[NeverMyFault lay some of the blame on Linda]] for Oscar's death because she always hung around creeps. Linda angrily tells Victor to kill himself.
83	* LeaveTheCameraRunning: Lots of ''very'' long takes in the film.
84	* {{Leitmotif}}: Bach's "Air on a G String" comes up repeatedly in moments related to Oscar and his sister.
85	* LovableRogue: Alex, who is a rather personable and intelligent junkie that repeatedly tries to beg Oscar to pursue more legitimate pursuits and to take care of his sister to no avail.
86	* LuredIntoATrap: Oscar is lured into a club with cops waiting nearby by Victor.
87	* MaleFrontalNudity: The nightclub owner, when dropping his pants to have sex with Linda backstage.
88	* ManChild: Linda insists she isn't one, but she's an all-around immature person who just happens to pursue some very adult pleasures.
89	* MatchCut: Several, as transitions from present to childhood, e.g. Oscar and his sister lying in bed as adults, cut to them in the same position as little kids.
90	* MediumBlending: A subtle version. Noé has said that every shot in the film was augmented by CGI. Additionally, the film features a multitude of seamlessly blended helicopter, crane, CG and handheld tracking shots.
91	* MindScrew: Drug trips and a spiritual journey all from one single POV are bound to look trippy.
92	* MindRape: It's implied that Oscar isn't just seeing their POV but is actually possessing the bodies of the various people whose heads he flies into throughout the film, including his sister's lovers.
93	* MommasBoy: Oscar's childhood flashbacks show he was closer to his mother than his father and while he might not necessarily ''want'' her in that way, there are multiple instances implying he has some sexual hang-ups revolving around her stemming from that closeness (such as how they're shown taking baths together with her naked chest being prominently shown, or how he has sex with his friend's mother with little issue).
94	%%* MoodMotif
95	* MoodWhiplash:
96	** The happy scenes and lullaby version of Bach's "Air on a G String" that occurs right before [[spoiler: Oscar's parents die in a car crash. Twice.]]
97	** Oscar (maybe) [[spoiler:being reborn to a beautiful woman is a warm and tender moment that is immediately followed by the medical staff cutting his umbilical chord, taking him away from her, and putting him on a separate bed despite his wailing.]]
98	* MrExposition: Alex during the WalkAndTalk scene from Oscar's home to The Voice, dropping {{Info Dump}}s about the Tibetan Book of the Dead which later becomes a reality for Oscar.
99	* MsFanservice: Linda, and how. The stripper dances and sex scenes are just the tip of the iceberg.
100	* MushroomSamba: Oscar's drug trip which we see from his POV. It's probably one of the more realistic trips shown on film.
101	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Victor has this realization after the coup with the cops goes awry.
102	* NearDeathClairvoyance: Oscar, upon dying, steps out of his body and observes what is happening to other characters in the story at that moment.
103	* NeonCity: The film takes place almost entirely at night in Tokyo, the ever-present neon lighting adding to the film's disorienting and hallucinogenic themes.
104	* NeverMyFault: Oscar doesn't believe that he's doing anything wrong by dealing drugs (because he never personally hurts anybody) and spends his last living moments putting the blame squarely on the police when he was the one who was threatening to shoot them with his non-existent gun.
105	* NoEnding: The film simply stops after [[spoiler: Oscar is shown being born.]]
106	%%* NothingIsScarier: zero context
107	* OnceMoreWithClarity:
108	** [[spoiler: The barely visible astral cloud in the bathroom light bulb is shown repeatedly in a variety of ways throughout the film and finally gets an explanation at the end of the film: it's reincarnation itself. [[MindScrew Or just semen.]]]]
109	** As we go through Oscar's life story, we end up reaching the point that Oscar starts at the beginning of the movie, and it follows through up to his death.
110	* TheOner: Oscar being woken up by Alex, [[WalkAndTalk taking a walk through the streets]] to The Void and getting busted by the police is all one 16-minute shot, despite being obscured a bit by the blinking of the POVCam.
111	* ParentalIncest: There are very strong Oedipal [[IncestSubtext implications]] with Oscar and his mother, [[PosthumousCharacter who died in a car crash along with his father]] when he and his sister were kids. In at least one flashback Oscar [[PrimalScene spies on his parents while they're in the bedroom]]. When he has sex with an older woman in the present, he immediately flashes back to being breastfed. In the climax there's a sex scene involving the same woman; when Oscar flies into the man's head to see things from his POV, she's replaced by his mother.
112	* ParentalSubstitute: A meaningful cut from a young Oscar [[spoiler:watching his parents have sex to him watching Alex having sex with a random woman]] implies that he sees his friend as something of a father figure albeit one whose advice he often ignores. Depending on how you view the ending, [[spoiler:Alex possibly becomes Oscar's father for real.]]
113	* PayEvilUntoEvil: Victor initially had this in mind when he turned on Oscar but quickly realizes it was DisproportionateRetribution.
114	* PervertedSniffing: We see Oscar sniffing his sister's discarded panty.
115	* PosthumousCharacter: Oscar and Linda's parents appear rather prominently in multiple flashbacks, but they're both long dead in the present after dying in a car crash.
116	* POVCam: Used extensively in the first 25 minutes or so of the film. Even Oscar's eye blinks are represented. But after [[spoiler:Oscar is killed, the film is mostly shot from behind a character's head or from a top-down perspective.]]
117	* PrimalScene: Twice in the movie we see a flashback of Oscar as a kid as he walks into his parents' bedroom and they're having sex.
118	* RaisedByGrandparents: Deconstructed. It is implied that after the car crash that killed their parents, Oscar and Linda are initially being taken care of by their (implied to be paternal) grandparents, but since they're just too old to take care of kids any longer, Oscar and Linda are forcibly split up and moved into different foster families.
119	* ReCut: Noé recut the film himself for the United States and the United Kingdom by effectively removing the seventh reel (out of nine) of footage. This cuts the film's run time from 161 minutes to 137, by removing "some astro-visions, an orgy scene with Linda and the Japanese girl, [and] the scene where [[spoiler: you see [Oscar] waking up at the morgue and he thinks he's alive but he's not, and then the camera goes down the plughole where she's tipping his ashes.]]" In a positive example of this trope, Noé mentioned that the removal of this footage has no impact whatsoever on the narrative and that it was a contractual obligation with the film's investors to have an alternate edit ready if the film went longer than 140 minutes. Both cuts are packaged together on the DVD and Blu-ray.
120	* {{Reincarnation}}: The concept of reincarnation is mentioned early on by Alex to Oscar. He explains that according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, after someone dies their soul may linger around their old surroundings for a period following their death. Oscar is shot by the police not much later and spends most of the movie as a disembodied spirit. [[spoiler:At the very end, after witnessing his sister Linda being impregnated, Oscar experiences being born again. The face of the woman is obscured, leaving it ambiguous whether he is reborn as Linda's baby, or whether his first life is just starting over again.]]
121	* {{Retirony}}: Oscar was planning to stop dealing drugs just before he died.
122	* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: Victor is [[spoiler:arrested by the police after the botched arrest of Alex, is disavowed by his contemporaries in the drug trade, has his apology rejected by Linda, gets thrown out of his own home by his parents, and is last seen giving blowjobs in a love hotel to get by.]]
123	* RuleOfSymbolism: The events that Oscar perceives after being shot are loosely based on his reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
124	* SensoryAbuse: Aside from the EpilepticFlashingLights listed above, various sounds also play a role in the movie's tone. The ambient score assembled by Music/DaftPunk's Thomas Bangalter incorporates excerpts from two musique concrète albums by electroacoustic composer Jean-Claude Éloy, which certainly employ this trope as part of their composition by layering field recordings of Tokyo nightlife on top of "electronic and concrete sounds."
125	* SexByProxy: The main character is killed about 15 minutes into the movie and spends the rest of it as a disembodied spirit. There are numerous occasions where he observes people having sex and flies into their heads to experience it from their point of view.
126	* ShoutOut:
127	** The top-down camera shots are an homage to Creator/BrianDePalma's use of the same technique in the film ''Film/SnakeEyes''.
128	** The ambient score of the film was assembled from existing music and sound sources collected by [[Music/DaftPunk Thomas Bangalter]][[note]]Noé really wanted him to compose the film's score, but Creator/{{Disney}} already tapped Daft Punk for the soundtrack of ''Film/TronLegacy'' at the same time; this was their compromise.[[/note]] in a way that is reminiscent of "[[Music/TheBeatles Revolution 9]]".
129	* ShownTheirWork: Oscar's DMT-induced drug trip at the start of the film is based on Noé's own experience with the drug.
130	* SlowClap: The strip club owner applauds Linda backstage this way after her first strip show in the movie.
131	* StacysMom: Victor's mom and Oscar have an affair. When Victor finds out, the movie takes a bad turn.
132	* TheStoic: Oscar is very much a straight man throughout the film, and when he raises his voice, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness you know it's serious]].
133	* SurpriseCarCrash: We see a flashback to the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc-vtVFJWo8 sudden and fatal car crash]] that made the protagonist and his sister ConvenientlyAnOrphan, when the family car is hit by a truck in a car tunnel. It's made even more jarring because the entire segment leading up to this was a whimsical family memory, with sweet lullaby music right up until the truck comes barreling out of nowhere.
134	* TheyShouldHaveSentAPoet: Oscar is silent during his trip, leading the viewer through a long series of visuals, often with no dialogue.
135	* TooDumbToLive: Oscar yelling "I have a gun" while the cops have him cornered in a bathroom during a drug raid wasn't the best idea.
136	* TragicMistake: Oscar makes quite a few, leading up to his death.
137	* TrashcanBonfire: Alex makes one to warm him during the night he spends outside.
138	* TrippyFinaleSyndrome: Also has a trippy beginning and middle. The finale takes it up a notch though, culminating in Oscar's spirit flying through a maybe-metaphysical space known as the Love Hotel involving basically every character in the movie, culminating with [[AndYourRewardIsInfancy Oscar being reborn]] after witnessing the impregnation of his sister by his best friend (?).
139	* TroubledFetalPosition: Done by Linda throughout the film, most notably when she first gets the news about Oscar's death.
140	* {{Turncoat}}: Victor turns on Oscar, leading to his death.
141	* UnbrokenFirstPersonPerspective: The entire film is from Oscar's perspective, but in non-chronological order and using different styles of POV shots. Specifically, the first one from the opening scenes is shown directly from his eyes so that we even see the ''movement of his eyelids''; a second POV is from Oscar's disembodied spirit as he flies around Tokyo observing the events around him; and a third POV shot with the back of his head in view, used only in flashbacks. Since these third-person shots are from flashbacks, the camera stays on his point of view, making a case of using both first and third-person shots at the same time.
142	* UsedToBeASweetKid: Both Oscar and Linda. Flashbacks to their youth show them just being two carefree kids, but then seeing both their parents get killed in a horrible car crash and sent to live in different foster homes clearly messed them up, where one is now a drug dealer and the other a stripper.
143	* VaderBreath: While Oscar is dying, he breathes heavily.
144	* WalkAndTalk: During TheOner, when Alex and Oscar walk from Oscar's place to The Void.

Context Film / EnterTheVoid