Noé finally sets to work on Enter the Void
Final straight to Japan for the shooting of Enter the Void, Gaspard Noé’s third feature for which filming got underway on October 19 and should finish on December 15 in Tokyo. The director of Argentine origin and “bad boy” of French cinema thus sees the project he conceived almost ten years ago come to a successful conclusion, having got through a number of producers in the process.
Absent from screens since Irreversible (in official competition at Cannes 2002), for his new film, whose shooting is top secret, Noé has decided to work with UK actors Olly Alexander (who plays the lead role Victor) and Sara Stockbridge (Spider [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), as well as young US actress Paz de la Huerta.
Written by the director, Enter the Void traces the protagonist’s subjective experiences of his own death. Recreating the progressive states of transformation after death via numerous hallucinations, psychedelic sensations, tunnel visions of colours and swirls, the film offers a visual version, very liberally adapted, of the disembodied journey described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thödol).
The story begins with the misadventures of a brother and sister (20 and 18 respectively), two Westerners who get involved in drug use during their travels. Noé describes the film as "somewhere between Ken Russell’s Altered States and Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder", whilst also evoking parallels with the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film adapations of Phillip K. Dick's work and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.
Produced by French companies Fidélité and Wild Bunch with an investment of 70%, the film also benefits from co-production funding from Germany's Essential Filmproduktion (20%) and Italy's BIM Distribuzione (10%).
The film’s budget of around €10m includes €500,000 from Eurimages and the same amount granted within the framework of the mini-treaty supporting French/German co-productions.
Wild Bunch are selling the film internationally and the theatrical release will not be before 2009 due to the vast amount of special effects work to be completed in the post-production phase.
(Translated from French)
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