As if sympathetic to the fact that I’d have a pounding hangover from Wednesday’s swish opening party in Chelsea, festival organizers were kind enough to schedule a film I’d already seen, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” for the next morning, affording me a much-needed lie-in.
Still, George Clooney’s second go-round on the LFF red carpet in as many days was the day’s major event. I already weighed in on the film at Venice, though from conversations I’ve had with others, I’m not finding many supporters for my view that the film is big, silly fun.
Anyway, missing this stop on the Clooney-London express afforded me the chance to catch up with two artier prospects that had been high on my festival priority list, one big (Gaspar Noé’s latest Cannes-endorsed provocation “Enter the Void”) and one small (Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev’s filmmaking debut “Wolfy”). Guess which one was the keeper.
“Enter the Void” (**)
Back in 2002, more column inches were spent on two isolated scenes — an agonizing rape sequence and that fire-extinguisher bludgeoning — than the whole of Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible,” but amid the shrill cries of the moral police, the film arguably received insufficient credit for its thoughtfulness (and structural verve) in probing and evaluating the way we respond to onscreen violence. An astonishing technical feat by any measure, it was that rare film that revealed something of the viewer to himself, albeit in an unpleasant fashion.