Enter The Void is Coming to America

It is not in any way surprising that Enter The Void was a polarizing film on the festival circuit.  I mean this was a three hour spiritual odyssey from Gaspar Noé, the director who made Irreversible.  Long, repetitive, loose and essentially shot in the first person, the film follows the murder and disjointed spirit of a small time drug dealer killed in a Tokyo night club.  It was my favorite film of the year, not because it had anything overly compelling to say, but because of the pure experience of the thing.  (Enter The Void is the gutter and bodily fluid but version of Avatar and both films share a psychedelic colour palette)  It is a sensory marvel.

So I am happy to hear that IFC has picked up the distributions rights for North America.   Anyone within a reasonable distance of the limited numbers of IFC theatres should scramble to catch this on as big of a screen as possible (where the film is meant to be seen), but the silver lining is the deal that IFC has with the Criterion Collection folks, where key IFC titles get the full Criterion treatment (as in the recent release of Soderbergh's Che).  Here is hoping that Enter The Void ends up with a handsome feature laden DVD and BLU-RAY release sometime within 2010.

Those of you who are at Sundance will have a chance to check it out (it is playing on a variety of screens there, choose the biggest if you can) in its festival cut (shorter than the Cannes cut), but word is that Noé continues to tweak the film (likely shaving off several more minutes) as it edges closer to distribution.