In the Realm of the Senses
Gaspar Noe's films want your senses open wide, and they get there by borrowing the architecture of games. The drug trip in Enter the Void is Child of Eden without a controller.
This is not an ode to Gaspar Noe. Rather, it’s a recognition of the specific aesthetic experience that his films deliver. If the cinema’s art house were to embrace VR content, Noe would be the reason. His films push the experiential, and what Noe wants you to feel has a ruthless exactitude. Where the blockbuster often tries to override your cognitive barriers via sensory barrage, Noe’s films command your brain to take dictation and your senses to open up wide.
To wit, this is the man that created a 3D porno and called it Love. For Noe, “love” describes not so much an abstract idea or feeling but rather the erotic stimulation of the senses. He even finds a way to translate this materialism to different types of love: in his debut I Stand Alone he has the narration explain special attachment to one’s mother as fond remembrance of her engorged breasts. In Love, the protagonist’s eros is stimulated most by his past lover so, summarily, that’s who he “loves” most. Since stimulation is the end-all, be-all, Noe strives to affect similar stimulation in the viewer: to “feel the love.” Thus, a close-up cumshot pointed right at you in 3D.
