(NOTE: This review is based on the full-length director’s cut.)

I may as well start with something that needs to be said, even if it’s an impossibly huge understatement: Enter the Void is a really weird movie. Here’s a film that was put together with American, German, Italian, French, and Japanese involvement, and it’s loosely based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The cast features Paz de la Huerta, back when she already had over 30 roles to her credit, alongside such nobodies as Nathaniel Brown and Cyril Roy. The writer/director is Gaspar Noe, whose highest-profile film aside from this is a notoriously controversial 2002 film titled Irreversible. Last but not least, there’s the involvement of Thomas Bangalter — one half of freakin’ Daft Punk — who wrote the film’s original music and directed the sound effects.

This movie was widely considered one of 2010’s premier arthouse pictures. I saw it on several “Best of 2010” lists, and quite a few people whom I occasionally pretend to respect went so far as to call this their #1 film of the year. Yet for several reasons that I won’t go into here, I missed out on this picture when it first came out. So it was that when I found a copy of the director’s cut available for rent, I jumped on the chance to finally give it a look. I’m not entirely sure if I regret that decision.

Folks, here are the opening credits for Enter the Void. If those gave you seizures or bothered you in any way, there’s your signal that this movie ain’t for you. With that out of the way, let’s meet our cast of characters, such as they are.

Our protagonist is Oscar, a drug dealer played by Nathaniel Brown. His sister is Linda, a stripper played by Paz de la Huerta. Oscar’s best friend and partner in crime is Alex, played by Cyril Roy. Linda’s boss/pimp is Mario, played by Masato Tanno. And last but not least is Victor, played by Olly Alexander, who betrays Oscar and inadvertently sets him up for death.

After Oscar’s death at the end of the first act, he spends the rest of the movie floating around through time and space. He relives his entire life in non-chronological order, then watches his loved ones go on without him, and finally picks a body for reincarnation. And we’re there to see every moment through his eyes. Literally.

I’ve seen movies like Requiem for a Dream or Trainspotting that purposefully endeavored to simulate the experience of drug use and bad hallucinations. But I’ve never before seen a movie that was filmed entirely through a drug user’s POV. The film even includes flashes of total darkness to simulate blinking. It’s very disorienting, to be perfectly frank.

Of course, the POV also means that we see Oscar’s hallucinations exactly as he sees them. Except that these aren’t hallucinations of people or events, they’re just colors and shapes. Seriously, there are several points in the film when the story will stop cold for minutes at a time, just to show a long sequence of so many twisting shapes. I can’t begin to count all the times when I asked what the hell I was looking at. Then there are the colors. Every frame of this film — including and especially during the hallucinations — is drenched with colors that are not found in nature. Colors that have never seen daylight. Colors that may somehow be outside the visible spectrum.

There’s really no point in talking about anything other than the visuals in this movie. There’s so little dialogue that the film’s story is told pretty much entirely through pictures. In fact, the timeline is so ephemeral and the presentation so dreamlike that the characters — and thus, their story — seem airy and immaterial. So, aside from the nicely creepy sound design, the movie hinges pretty much entirely on its visuals. And they are phenomenal.

For one thing, the camera work is revolutionary. With assists from the set design and VFX, Noe manages camera placements and movements that are stunning from first to last. The editing is also very clever, with neat little hidden cuts to provide a sweet illusion of long, continuous shots. All of this is essential to creating a film told entirely from behind the protagonist’s eyes, and it’s all done superbly well.

The editing is also quite clever in its non-linear presentation of Oscar’s life story. There are many examples throughout the film, but my personal favorite came during the scene in which Oscar and Linda are on a roller coaster ride. They’re having a great time, they pass through a tunnel… and then they’re in the frontal car crash that killed their parents. That was an inspired shock moment. The film is great about taking thematically important moments and using them repeatedly as the film calls for it. Which brings me to the matter of the symbolism.

There are more symbols and visual metaphors than I could possibly know how to consciously look for, and all of them serve to advance the story and give the film meaning. Lights, for example, have a prominent role as guides from one point in space-time to another. These play an especially huge part in the film during the back half, when the narrative finally starts to find its rhythm. There’s also a very interesting bookend that involves indoor plumbing, used to carry away waste. Ashes are another great metaphor, since they’re used to represent both drugs and death.

Perhaps foremost among the symbols in this movie is that of the female breast. Oh, there is a ton of nudity and sex in this film, and most of it carries overt Oedipal and/or incestuous overtones. Creepy enough, but let’s not forget that the film is told entirely from the main character’s first-person POV. This provides the illusion that Paz de la Huerta is our sister, and Janice Beliveau-Sicotte is our mother. Squicky, no?

I’m not sure if I can call Enter the Void a good movie or a bad one. From a story point of view, the film is so new, so original, and so completely unlike anything else out there that I’m left without a yardstick to measure it against. As for the visuals, I really don’t know if such amazing use of color and lighting can be called “good” when they’re liable to cause seizures. However, when all is said and done, I admire the film’s technical proficiency, originality, and sheer ballsiness to such a degree that I’m more inclined to recommend it than not.

Having said that, this movie still comes with a boatload of warnings. The film is frequently self-indulgent to an annoying degree, a lot of taboo subject matter is involved, and the film strives to be a work of cinematic art more than anything else. If you think this movie may not be for you, it most likely isn’t. Otherwise, any arthouse aficionados who haven’t already seen it should definitely give this movie a try.