Argentinian director Gaspar Noé has never been coy about his passion for the films of Stanley Kubrick - from the 2001: A Space Odyssey poster on the bedroom wall in Irreversible to his often pessimistic view of human nature, Kubrick's influence is apparent. While Noé doesn't live up to Kubrick in terms of greatness (hardly a criticism given Kubrick's unassailable position as one of cinema's masters) he does succeed in using the language of cinema in its purer sense. With Enter The Void he uses his camera in a completely unique way, telling the first person story of an American named Oscar living in Tokyo who is shot and (possibly?) killed by police, his disembodied consciousness traversing the neon-lit city. The camerawork is predictably virtuosic as it swoops around looking down on life below, while Oscar's apparent death and rebirth taking on increasingly psychedelic tones as the process reaches its conclusion. Never has a camera been utilised in such a literally metaphysical way.
