Hi there,
Normally don't react to forums in general, but having seen Enter the Void last night, and finding myself more than impressed by it, your question had already gotten me thinking as well since the whole Love Hotel sequence including the glowing genitals was so over-the-top that it indeed begged for an explanation.
I myself relate it to a sort of resurrection of the love within the main characters all related to Oscar's death. Thanks to the Love Hotel (or should we say: thanks to LOVE itself, which is always inherently present and seeking expansion), after Oscar's death, they get to experience their own light, instead of getting drawn away further into the Void, by actions based on fear, traumas, misunderstandings, lust, ego...
That's where the phalli come in (no pun intended). Yes, the movie has a lot of sex scenes, explicit even, but that may have been necessary to address Oscar's and Linda's reality - and how many people's reality is not based this still, sad enough? People are having sex for lust, ego pleasure, for money... No special effects were used when showing these sexual acts - even more: the sexual interaction between Linda and her Japanese partner in the dressing room was characterised by being very uninspired (of course this is part of a personal opinion).
This changed to being an enlightened experience after Oscar's spirit literally descended into the heads of the characters (Linda, Alex, Victor), at which point their love for him and his for them, still present, connected and gave him the insight in where he had failed, as a person, when interacting with them when still alive. When the main characters had become aware of their own role (Alex), asked for forgiveness (Victor) or repented (Linda), Oscar's spirit was ready to return through the magical doorway of Love, which had been facilitated by the realisation of the Love Hotel by Alex' Asian roommate. This is when everybody was able to go on with their lives, interact with their fellows like it ought to be, i.e. out of love, creating joy and light - hence the glowing. (I think I remember that it was not just the phalli but also the female genitals giving light, but I am not sure).
In any case, in the end, karma was restored, and the director chose showing this through a master set up of a Love Hotel where everybody was making love instead of getting laid. The many sexual explicit scenes, then, I see as an essential thread in the whole construction of confronting depictions of important themes: drugs and the other dimensions, death and life, light and dark... As such, I think the director wants to give us a real life implication of the Tibetan Book of the Death. This movie may show us the implications of choosing for the dark, creating Karma out of it, to which death can be a perfect, neutral, solution that can possible set all things straight through the 'unseen' world of Spirit, which in the end rules over everybody and everything: bodily experiences like being shot, emotional ones like fears and traumas, mental ones like addictions to sex and drugs, and spiritual ones, like dying, being born, and everything in between....
Hope this may help you or somebody. It sure helps me putting these thoughts into words! Thank you.
PS: like your quote on the Buddhist!
PPS: what's that first quote from?
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CocksureBurns
10 years ago
Hi p-biemans-1,
Wow, you've really given this some thoughtful consideration! At the time of my original post, Enter The Void was the only Gaspar Noé film that I'd seen. Having seen more of his work since, I've come to the conclusion that ETV is his only accessible movie for me. IMO, his style reflects a rather twisted director out to merely shock and scandalize his audience, not unlike an overindulgent 'look-at-me' naughty child. Without an engaging story, his methods are tedious. Irréversible was a nauseating assault on the viewer, just this side of a disgusting snuff film. No thanks - there's already plenty of senseless, heartbreaking evil in this world without spending time and money to experience even more.
Although I do appreciate your cogent analysis and don't disagree with anything you've written, I haven't the patience to tease out such minutiae from a movie which pretends to be deep. I don't care for 'art' which punishes. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer discreet cut-aways rather than explicit sex/violence. I'm content to suppose that Enter The Void is perhaps a fluke decent offering from an otherwise underdeveloped director, and leave it at that. I'll not be pursuing anything more by Noé.
P.S. As for the Buddhist philosophical joke, I don't know its origin, but here is its addendum:
So the Buddhist gets his hot dog, one with everything, pays the vendor with a $10 bill and waits for his change, which is not forthcoming. The Buddhist is momentarily confused, until the vendor says, "Change comes from within."
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