CriterionCast

Gaspar Noe’s Uncut Enter The Void Screening At IFC Center Until Thursday

Did you miss Gaspar Noe’s latest film, the mindbending piece of narrative feature filmmaking known as Enter The Void? Well, IFC thankfully has your back.

IFC Films has announced that they will be re-releasing the film in theaters, with an additional 20 minutes of footage that was originally cut from the film when released stateside.   The footage was released theatrically in France, but was unavailable here in the states.

The film is playing at the IFC Center from January 14-20, with showings at 3:10pm and 8:40pm, with an additional showing at 11:45 on Friday and Saturday.   Enter The Void unfortunately won’t make it’s way into the Criterion Collection, but will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on January 25th.



Personally, while I won’t be able to catch this, it just proves how much respect and love this film has seemingly been getting since it premiere in September.   I am an absolutely huge fan of Noe as a filmmaker, and while Void may not be making its way to the Criterion Collection, it’s one that I’ll definitely be picking up come it’s release later this month.

Source: IFC

From the press release:


Original, uncut version of Gaspar Noé’s Critically Acclaimed Hit ENTER THE VOID To Be Released In Theaters.

New York, NY (January 12, 2011) ‘“ IFC Films announced today that the company is releasing the original, uncut version of Gaspar Noe’s ENTER THE VOID in New York and Los Angeles. The new cut includes 20 minutes of footage never before seen in American theaters’”although it was this longer version that was released theatrically in France, to great acclaim. VOID first opened in New York on September 24th, 2010 at the IFC Center and still continues to play to packed theaters as it enters into the fifth month of its run, making it one of the top grossing films in IFC Center history. Gaspar Noé’s provocative drama has proven to be one of the most talked about films of the year, appearing on numerous top-ten lists, including lists by filmmakers such as Edgar Wright, John Waters, and Quentin Tarantino who have all named it one of the best films of 2010. Tarantino comments about VOID, ‘Hands down best credit scene of the year’¦ Maybe best credit scene of the decade. One of the greatest in cinema history.’

Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) are recent arrivals in Tokyo. Oscar’s a small time drug dealer, and Linda works as a nightclub stripper. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot. As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister that he would never abandon her, refuses to leave the world of the living. It wanders through the city, in visions growing evermore distorted, evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.

Required to deliver a shorter version of ENTER THE VOID for international sale, Noé decided to excise an entire reel from his original cut, skipping over part of Oscar’s transition into the spirit world. In the restored footage ‘Oscar wakes up in the morgue and he thinks he’s alive but he’s dead,’ Noé explains, ‘and his sister, his friends say, ‘No, man, you’re not you, you’re not Oscar. You’re a zombie.’ He looks in the mirror and sees the face of his father instead of his own face and Alex says, ‘No, c’mon, man. You never came back to life. You’re dead, you’ve been cremated. You’re just dreaming that you’re alive. And then we go to that astral vision where he comes out from that urn where his ashes are inside his sister’s apartment and she throws his ashes into the sink and the camera gets into the sink. And that’s where we see some weird kind of insects’¦’ Noé adds, ‘Actually, when I proposed that solution to the producers, they told me they thought it was never going to work.’

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.

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