Enter the Void

The movie pulses with sex longing and exploitation.
It is also an interesting portrayal of the theories of
reincarnation.

The primary longing is that of the soul to be reborn,
coupled with the boys somewhat incestuous overprotective
love for his sister.

It takes place in a seedy pulsing Tokyo ( somewhat out of a
foreigner dream because I felt it had littler resemblence to the
work a day Tokyo I experienced). A brother and a sister, Oscar and
Linda struggle to survive in a seedy messy apartment in Tokyo where
Oscar has slid into a life of dealing drugs and Linda into a life of
exotic dancing, at a club run by her exploititve boyfriend Mario.
At the beginning of the film Oscar is reading the Tibetan book of the dead, and
Linda who hates that her brother is going hanging out with drug dealer
is going to work as a dancer.

After Linda leaves, Oscar tries to overcome the seedy reality of his living
situation by taking mushrooms and the film viewer sees him enter a
trance. He get a call from his friend who want some drugs, at a nearby
bar. At the bar it turns out that in fact it was a set up and Oscar is shot
by the Tokyo police. Oscar dies in a seedy bathroom and that is were the
movie begins as Oscar hovers around Tokyo waiting to be reborn. His primary
concern is for his sister, but it isn't clear if it is out of brotherly love of
something else. The bother and sister lost their parents in a car crash as children.
Oscar wanted to protect to help his sister but he continually fails. First as a child
when she is taken away to foster care and then later when in Tokyo he tries to
take care of her and instead she falls into stripping and he himself
gets killed, and reincarnates as his sisters son with lots of sex and drugs
and memories of the past along the way.

The last film made by Gaspar Noe was Irreversiable which contemplates the uselessness
of revenge, and features highly sexualized violence. In some moments both seem more
tender than movies where neither happen. But maybe both are fever dreams,
in both women become increasingly powerless, because of their own nature.