Fair warning ahead of time: if you have epilepsy, then this movie intends to do you harm. The title sequence is flashing the text so quickly that you would need to slow it down frame by frame in order to pick out more than a couple of the names in it, and it's more than a little disorienting. But in its defense, it is artistically pretty cool. It's like a gallery art show... only in flashing text of alternating colors and styles with fast music playing. The story itself is about Oscar, an American drug dealer in Tokyo (I wonder if that could be a movie title...) taking drugs and kind of reflecting on his life. It's a slow movie with more thought than snappy dialogue, so if you're not a patient person, you'll hate this movie. By the way, this is an English-language French film.When Oscar smokes some of his product early in the film, we get another kind of artsy sequence in some computer animated rendering of what he sees. I wouldn't be qualified to attest to how accurate a representation this is (among other barriers, I'm not 100% sure what it was, but he often tried to score DMT in the film), but if any knowledgeable readers out there have seen this film and would care to post in the comments (heck, set up a dummy-account if you want to stay anonymous) I would be curious to hear how it compares to your experiences. Anyway, much of the film is seen out of the main character's eyes (rather than an obvious [or steady] camera), so this scene in particular reminds me of much of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (which I once played a drinking game during, and very strongly caution you against trying), and the camera-motion style reminds me of Irreversible (which did not surprise me when I found out that Gaspar Noe wrote and directed both films). One thing I didn't particularly like about the film was that much of the dialogue was pretty low/quiet and during the drug/disorientation sequences there was some voice in a low/echo-y tone that was almost impossible to make out. That may have been the intention (not to know what was said), but I like to know what words are used when words are used. I do like when some scenes flashed from "present tense" to a moment in the past as our first-person view character is reminded of that moment. I thought it was clever and pretty seamlessly integrated.
After one point, the movie kind of changes gears to a reflection on Oscar's childhood and recent life, and here we get a broader picture of what's going on with him and some context for what we have seen so far. We (the camera) also spends a lot of time drifting along the ceiling and across town observing different scenes and moving between them. This is kind of disorienting but also kind of interesting as we're along for the ride (more so than with other films, in which I suppose this is also true). There was some interesting juxtaposition of concepts by visual similarities between different scenes that have very different (in some respects) subject matter or emotional tones. One such scene took me a moment to recognize what I was seeing, and when I did realize it, it was pretty disturbing (they make it clear shortly afterwards what it was, and while the reveal is also disturbing, it might be more merciful if you don't realize until that point).
If you like artier movies and/or enjoy recreational drug use, then I imagine you'll like this movie. If you liked Irreversible, then you'll like this film. If you're not a patient person, then this movie is not for you. It was creative storytelling, so I liked it even though I can't really identify with any of the characters. It's not something I think I'll watch a second time, and so with its value and caveats it scores 3 stars for me. It's probably a "play silently in the background at a party" kind of movie (if you know the film and know your guests enough to know that they will appreciate and not hate the various images).
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