The movie is bizarre and even after multiple viewings I still don’t understand all of its meaning. Nearly every frame of film could be taken as an individual work of art. For every part it is strange and disturbing, it is equal parts beauty and serenity. As a genre, I would say it fits closest as a thriller or maybe even a horror, but I can guarantee you this is a movie unlike any other you’ve seen. Returning again to the mind of Lars von Trier, we watch Willem Dafoe as a psychiatrist attempting to guide his mentally unstable wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) as she recuperates from an emotionally traumatizing event (which she appears to be attempting to cope with through sex). Of all the films on this list, this one is perhaps the darkest and most disturbing although I would also say it’s the most beautiful. And for the curious of mind, you get to see Shia LaBeouf’s ding-dong! Now how ‘bout that? A dark mix of drama, comedy, personality, violence and perversion, this in-depth examination of human sexuality never ceases to surprise and never once starts to bore. It may work as a date-movie - depending on how comfortable you and your bae are with these sorts of things - although I’m hesitant to recommend it as one.
The movie is split into two separate volumes, each one about two-and-a-half hours long. The acting is bitingly realistic and draws from such talents as Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Shia LaBeouf and of course the avant-garde stylings of Danish director Lars von Trier. The whole movie is about sex, BUT there’s something in it for everybody and it explores every sexual viewpoint: promiscuity, infidelity, abstinence, asexuality, masochism, domination, sadism, bondage, pedophilia, eroticism, homosexuality and everything in between. Once there, she confesses to him with great detail her life-story and its many sexual exploits. Viewer discretion is advised.Ī soft-voiced woman in her 40s is discovered beaten and bloodied in the street by a kind old man who offers her tea and a place to rest.
For those who make it to the end of the movie, you will be greeted with what is perhaps one of the most bizarre and intense angles a camera could take during a sex scene. A sporadically plotted, visually stunning, sexualized and surrealistic phantasmagoria, this movie is perfect for cinephiles looking to wet their feet in the darker fringes of Netflix. Even as he smokes DMT and slips into a psychedelic trance we trip with him and see what he sees. The camera blinks in sync with the character - his thoughts are heard as ubiquitous echoes. The entire movie is shot in first-person from the perspective of the drug dealer. But what makes this movie so captivating and unique is not its narrative or even really its themes it’s the psychedelic cinematography and visual style. Centered around a drug-dealer/DMT-enthusiast living on the electrified avenues of downtown Tokyo, this nearly three-hour rollercoaster of a film can only be described as a visually-provocative treatise on the greed, darkness and perversions of the human condition. All these and more make up the French-directed, American-acted experimental film “Enter the Void.” “Enter the Void” is the brainchild of director Gaspar Noé, a man known for his dark, gritty and sometimes violent style of story-telling. German Max Riemelt ( Sense8) keeps up every step of the way as her chilling and multifaceted captor, but this is Palmer’s film, and it gave the dynamite actress long-relegated to playing love-interest side characters a serious calling card in Hollywood.Drugs, dicks, DMT, death and Asians. It also differs from other films of its ilk in that this nightmare begins with genuine erotic tension and heat, a mutual attraction.Īussie-born Teresa Palmer of Hacksaw Ridge fame delivers a ripper of a performance as a victim suffering in stages not unlike the stages of grieving. Though Australian director Cate Shortland‘s adaptation of Melanie Joosten‘s novel about a tourist imprisoned by a handsome teacher after a passionate one-night-stand is a thriller (quite heart-pounding at times), and much of the woman’s mistreatment is extremely hard to watch, this highly absorbing psychological drama stands out because it’s all about the characters and what’s going on in their heads. So abundant we might as well make them their own genre, movies about kidnapped females generally go one of two ways: It’s either all about the suspense, figuring out how and if she will get out-or there’s the nastier route, the really low road, when some movies focus on a woman’s torture and humiliation, turning it into spectacle.
Teresa Palmer and Max Riemelt in 'Berlin Syndrome' (eOne, Netflix) 10.