Cannes's blog

About the film:
Seven years after the Official In-Competition Selection of Irreversible, which had a huge impact on the audience, Gaspar Noé is back in Cannes with a "psychedelic melodrama" entitled Enter the Void.

In this film, Noé follows the close bond between Oscar and Linda, a brother and sister who have moved to Tokyo together. One night, in a police raid on a nightclub, Oscar is wounded by gunfire. As his life slowly ebbs away, he is haunted by chaotic, nightmarish visions. Past, present, and future are blended in a hallucinatory maelstrom.

"This is an idea I've had for a while, before Carne or Seul contre tous," Gaspar Noé says. "I've written it over the past fifteen years and I couldn't even tell you how many drafts I've done. The first were much more narrative and linear, while the later drafts were much more abstract and euphoric. Irreversible was kind of a trial run for this project, where I tested ideas with flying cameras and long takes."

Press conference:
The Enter the Void crew was reunited today for the Cannes Festival press conference. Director Gaspar Noé took the podium alongside actors Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, and Cyril Roy, as well as producers Vincent Maravel, Marc Missonnier, Olivier Delbosc, and Pierre Buffin. Highlights follow.

Gaspar Noé on being at Cannes :
"I don't think I'm swimming against the tide. In any case, the Cannes Festival Selection is so large, there are many tides, not just one."

Gaspar Noé on the screenplay:
"It was very difficult to explain the film project to producers to get financing… Unlike Irreversible, where there wasn't a script, just three pages about an idea, I carried around a one-hundred page screenplay, in which I described the visual effects in the most minute detail, so that people could get an idea of where I was coming from, as a director… I enclosed a graphic booklet with the screenplay, to provide even more explanation. Then, we had to succeed in copying those visuals, and even going beyond them… When you're producing and shooting, and even in post-production, ideas keep flooding in, and often they're the best ones."

Gaspar Noé on the difficulty of the project:
"I had a lot of freedom when I was shooting. This type of film is practically impossible to finance. In the United States, it's unthinkable. It's in English, so it looks American. It was shot in Japan. If it wasn't for Vincent Maravel, Marc Missonnier, Olivier Delbosc, and Pierre Buffin, there wouldn't be a film today. They're extremely open-minded. As long as we didn't blow the budget to smithereens, they encouraged me to make the film as strange as possible. That kind of encouragement is really thrilling."