2010 Sundance Film Festival

This film is visceral. It pushes boundaries. It mesmerizes. It assaults. And it makes you think. Birth, sex, death--these oft explored cinematic themes spiral into overwhelm here, and yet, the film is stunningly beautiful. Gaspar Noé has taken on a brave role with his films and Enter the Void is a remarkable achievement. Noé provokes his audience with imagery, sound and movement that are rare for cinema, rare even for independent, art house, edgy film festival fare. See it.

This film felt a lot like Frozen River to me, maybe due to Melissa Leo being in it and because it had the same producers. I liked much about this film, but it felt a little forced in several places. It needed a veteran director, I think, to really pull off its aims. A bigger budget would have helped, too, but it makes do pretty well with what it has to work with in that regard. It is a good film, but it could have been great. It went over well with the Salt Lake City audience. Melissa Leo is absolutely channeling Jo Van Fleet's Arletta in Cool Hand Luke in this film. Not a bad film. It has some powerful scenes. It achieves some, but not all, of what it tries to achieve.

Very strong performances and beautifully shot, this film, however, failed to reach me on a deeply emotional level. Kind of left me cold. It was interesting and sad, funny at times, and it does capture the pain of Ryan Gosling's character well. But it doesn't dig deeply enough into the cause of Michelle William's character's pain. I liked it a lot, but could not find a way to love it. Worth seeing for sure. There is some great stuff in this film, but overall, it doesn't quite achieve the greatness to which it aspires.