Irréversible

I'm a sucker for film-world hype--always have been, and probably always will be. When I stumble across a film that is so controversial it inspires both gasps of horror and cheers of praise, I flock to it. There is something intriguing about film's capacity to house unpleasantness, and just how far a director will go in conveying his message (it's always interesting to see whether or not they have a justified reason for the excess). "Irreversible," the backward-structured film from French shock auteur Gaspar Noe ("I Stand Alone") spins you out of control with as much regularity as his camera and characters will allow. It's a curious piece of work designed to provoke the audience--at the beginning, you're disoriented and confused (and, if you're like me, getting carsick from the deliberately erratic camera movements), and even repulsed by the actions of the unfamiliar characters hassling the patrons of a seedy homosexual club, a sequence that ends with a ghastly murder. Okay, then, so what? Clearly the rest of the movie is going to give us an explanation...but would the film have had a similar effect if it were told in a straightforward manner? Is the backward motion of "Irreversible" just a gimmick used by Noe (who is not immune from snobbery and pretension) to draw attention to his film? It's hard to say. Personally, I reject the notion of the reverse storyline being used as a gimmick, simply because of how deliberately the previous pieces fit (certain passages of dialog, particularly a discussion of orgasms that serves as a prelude to one of the most horrifying rape scenes in film history); Noe certainly wasn't asleep in his construction of the film. "Irreversible" displays the type of oppressive misanthropy (the dialog is loaded with racial and homophobic slurs) evidenced in Noe's "I Stand Alone" (the tale of an out-of-work butcher driven to madness by everyone around him), but then pulls back from the hard-edged violence to show a tender humanity that might be even more startling, since the film could have easily played itself for nothing but shock value the entire time. "Irreversible" is an unsettling conundrum that guides us through the highs and lows of the human condition--it pushes buttons of morality, shows in graphic detail what others would only suggest, and brings us out the end of the tunnel exhausted, invigorated, and breathless. A stunning film, somewhat hampered by its excessive dialog.

This film won't be for everyone. There are two scenes that require a strong stomach, the camera work, initially at least, is near nausea inducing and the narrative structure, playing chronologically backwards to some may feel gimmicky.

I thought this was terrific though.

The plot is essentially a revenge thriller, where a sexual assault is avenged through a brutal act of violence.

The narrative structure works for me - starting with a brutal act of violence, then gradually plays out the events that led up to that point. It is frenetic, urgent and compelling. Vincent Cassel is brilliant as ever here too.

The trigger for the revenge is shown as a protracted sexual assault, and I'm sure many will consider it gratuitous. To describe it as such is kinda missing the point - its duration and violence makes the viewer complicit in the crime and is, in part intended to justify the act of violence that follows (though we the audience have already seen).

It would be easy to reduce the film to the narrative device and these two scenes. Those scenes do live long in the memory, but the film is more than that. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of watching the film again, but that's because once is enough, doesn't make it any more compelling. I thought this was mint.

When his girlfriend Alex is brutally raped in an underpass, boyfriend Marcus and Alex's ex-boyfriend Pierre are approached by a couple of criminal types who claim to know who did it and lead Marcus on the path to revenge via hookers and a man in a brutal gay club known as the Rectum.

I shan't waste my time or yours by writing more of a plot to this film than that because this is all quite thin stuff. Normally I find myself gradually engaged by a film as it develops characters and stories however with Irréversible I was gripped immediately but the effect worked in reverse, just like the film. Others have asked why this film is told backwards, with some waxing lyrical about the film demonstrating the nature of actions and consequences. I don't buy this and I almost believe that the film is structured this way because Noé knows that his film is not good enough to engage the audience with the development of the story and characters to the point where they would still care by the end. Whereas, by starting with his biggest and most impacting sequences he has preventing the audience thinking "this is going nowhere" by putting us right where it is going to.

Of course what this means is that the film genuinely has nowhere to go to because the developmental issue is still there – albeit the need to see roots rather than branches. With this there is nothing and I felt myself becoming more and more disappointed with the film as it went on as it seemed to offer nothing but missed potential. Unlike Memento (which was a thriller with the reason being to find out what caused the end), Irréversible's ending is an act of violence and revenge that, in essence occurs out of bad fortune rather than a series of events that are worth holding out for. With this in mind the focus comes more on the characters and their relationships to find a reason to make the impacting opening to the film feel that much more impacting. Sadly it does fall down and despite some interesting stuff that might have gone somewhere (if not to the actual crime), themes of sexual intimacy, differences in men and women and so on are just suggested but never delivered upon and my interest and respect for the film waned frighteningly quickly.

It is a terrible shame because the film had initially won me over quickly. With the first shots of spinning camera, "irrelevant" men and disorientating delivery I prepared myself to hate this film and slate it for being pretentious. This feeling didn't subside much as we were thrown into a gay club ending with an intensely brutal scene of violence that quite sickened me. The reason for this is almost the following scene where we see the beautiful and classy Alex brutally and meaninglessly sodomised on the floor of a dirty underpass for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong sex. With my eyes at the time I found these scenes to be quite brilliant but finding out later there was nothing beyond them I take a dimmer view. In his defence, Noé's sequences should not be mentioned in the same breath as the recent Holly wood trend for torture porn because there is nothing erotic here. The rape scene in particular is disturbing, sickening and based on violence, certainly not sex, attraction or arousal. Some comments on IMDb have disturbed me and shown that some people will still "enjoy" these scenes – one particular comment saying "fans of rape movie will appreciate" the sequence I felt was in particular poor taste. However for me it is as effective as it is unpleasant, Noé does not adopt the angles, style or nudity of pornography and indeed leaves the camera on the floor and lets the actors deliver an experience that is undeniably cruel and wrong. Viewers who chose to get off on that will do so however for those of us not stimulated by the violent degradation of another the effect will be harrowing.

The cast are good where they are caught up in things. Cassel is convincing in his revenge scenes but has less to work with in the later (earlier) scenes. Likewise Bellucci is amazing in her key scene; utterly convincing and heart-wrenching in her agony and I can only imagine how difficult it was for her to shoot. Dupontel is interesting but his performance would have benefited from going from innocence to violence and not the other way round. Prestia is a convincing human version of Satan, who is sickeningly real. Noé's direction is impressive even if his ability as writer is not. His camera earlier on matches the frantic violent mood of his characters but gradually calms down. Quite what he is saying with where the film goes or how it ends is beyond me but by then he had done sufficiently little to convince that I shouldn't worry myself too much.

Overall an impacting "experience" film that starts out with the potential to be a challenging and difficult art film. However with nothing past these scenes of significant value, the backward telling just seems like a way of having the "big" scenes before losing the audience, rather than afterwards and for all my appreciation and admiration for his intense and creative technique as director, I found Noé the writer to be lacking. In summary I'm not sure if I liked this or not or if it is worth seeing but it is certainly an experience that should be seen by those looking for a diverse taste of cinema whether it is "enjoyable" or not.

Holy Macaroni! Believe the hype, folks...this really IS one of the most shocking, confronting and raw movies ever made! It actually is one of those rare purchases that makes you wonder what the role of cinema is in modern society. Irréversible certainly can't be classified as 'entertainment', that's for sure. It merely looks like a brutal eye-opener, highly unpleasant to watch at times and it sometimes makes you even feel ashamed to be human! Some of the stuff here goes beyond your most feared nightmares and could easily provoke depression, anti-social behavior and anxiety among influential viewers. It's real-life drama and that makes it so powerful and shocking. Irréversible is told backwards, 'Memento'-style if you wish...only it's a lot more effective here as it was in Memento, which actually was a pretty boring and extremely overrated movie. This very simple backwards-structure aspect gives Irréversible the opportunity to implement a couple of unique and rarely seen style elements. The first half hour (which actually is the end of the story) smacks you in the face right away sets the tone for a non-stop, raw experience. Also, you don't really get to know the characters until the last chapter (which is actually the beginning of the film) The characters are a riddle to you constantly and you can't symphatise with any of them, since you just know too little. Through wild camera movements and simplistic techno-music, a claustrophobic and horrifying atmosphere gets created and the violence is really hard to digest. The infamous scene in which Monica Belluci brutally gets raped is one of the most perverted things I've ever seen. It seems to go on forever and you can really visiualise the painful hell the poor girl is going through. I'd call Irréversible a successful combination of ancient, rough exploitation and modern art-house film-making. The brutality portrayed here is typical for the euro-shock cinema but the stylish shooting lifts it up to Cannes Festival material. Cult as pure as it comes!

Irreversible is a well acted film with a couple of really confronting scenes. It deals with a taboo topic for its time in graphic detail. I had to stop watching at times and take a break given it's graphic content and nauseating movement of the camera.