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The last time a controversial, rape-filled French import,
Baise-moi (Rape Me), landed on American shores,
it turned out to be an over-hyped waste of time, made by ex-porn
stars who quickly disappeared into deeper obscurity than before.
The end credits, however, gave thanks to a new cinematic psychopath
of genuine artistic interest, Gasper Noé, whose Seul
contre tous (I Stand Alone) was a sort of first-person
psychotic episode. Now, with the unfortunate announced intention
of wanting to make a film “that would get banned,” Noé has
returned with Irreversible, which offers up a nine-minute
sodomy-rape, provoking numerous (and for once non-apocryphal)
stories of festival walk-outs. Fortunately, Irreversible
turns out to be considerably more interesting than the sum
of its controversies, although it’s a film of notable flaws,
mostly stemming from its juvenile desire to disturb.
Irreversible borrows Memento’s reverse structure,
but there the similarities definitively end. Memento
had a twist ending and whodunit structure; Irreversible
merely seeks to make a fatalist point. We progress from violence
to its cause to the innocence and happiness that existed beforehand.
Marcus (Cassel) has his girlfriend Alex (Bellucci)
raped, and seeks macho revenge, with devastating results.
Arguably first and foremost, Irreversible is a formidable
display of technical prowess. Using a vertiginous handheld
camera at virtually all times, Noé manages to eliminate all
obvious cuts by ending all scenes with the camera moving upward
to face the ceiling and dissolving into an abstract cluster
of changing lights, then panning down for the next sequence,
with the gap seamlessly edited out via digital techniques.
One of the first sequences is an subliminal nightmare of suggestive
imagery: Marcus wanders through a gay bar, where quick, appalled
glances on either side reveal, through Marcus’s homophobic
eyes, unspeakable depravities. Later, however, Noé takes in
Bellucci’s sodomization in a single, brutal close-up. The
problem with the rape, however, is that after it stops being
horrifying, it becomes numbing, and finally boring.
Fortunately, Noé is after something more interesting than
a mere nihilistic statement. As every aspect of the movie
screams—its advertising tagline, the final titles, and the
opening monologue—“Time destroys everything.” People and their
worst instincts, rather than any sort of fundamental vileness,
are to blame for human hellishness. By ending his movie at
an innocent beginning—Bellucci lying on a grassy plain reading
while little kids run around—Noé suggests that once, at some
point, early in our lives, we are capable of happiness and
being emotionally virginal. Maturation, sex, and jealousy
(both romantic and class-related) destroy all things as we
grow aware of them over time. Noé uses not just time as his
agent to demonstrate this, but pulls out 2001: A Space
Odyssey as a parallel example, prominently displaying
a poster for it on the walls of Bellucci’s apartment. There,
mankind went full-circle, becoming reborn in innocence. Noé
is more fatalistic about humans, denying them the comfort
of an allegorical ending, but still suggests that if only
things could be completely restarted, they would turn out
okay.
The first half is vile and kind of boring in a typical would-be
shocker way (although it succeeds in shocking more often than
usual for this type of import), at least in its two virtuoso
set-pieces: sodomy and death by fire extinguisher, respectively.
Watching Cassel walk around insulting “Chinks,” threatening
transvestites, and generally acting coked-up has an overly
familiar, albeit newly brutal, feel to it. It’s the second
half that’s truly remarkable, recalling the spirit of early
Godard—spirited discussions about the nature of sex
and love, and a remarkable extended cuddling-but-no-sex sequence
between Bellucci and Cassel that surprises with both its sweetness
and honesty, beating out the much-acclaimed sex scene from
Late Marriage hands down. Unfortunately, it never adds
up to anything with the movie’s first half: We keep in mind
the inevitable consequences, but never feel their impact as
they move further backward in time. Ironically, though running
the film backward is necessary to the film’s philosophical
point, it’s absolutely no help in leaving any sort of emotional
impact on the viewer.
Unlike so many films with hellishly controversial reputations,
Irreversible is not just another controversy in search
of an actual movie: It’s a technically adept piece of work,
philosophically considered, and generally a serious piece
of work, rather than just a cynical art-house exploitation
piece, and nearly essential viewing for anyone interested
in seeing a truly new direction in film. The bold experiment
ultimately fails, but maybe I’m just not sensitive enough
to rape scenes and the like to be as affected as I ought to
be. If so, I probably should’ve seen the movie when I was
12 to be properly affected—time, apparently, has destroyed
my humanity, along with everything else.
—Vadim Rizov
Watching Irreversible is very similar to being on
a jolting carnival ride: Imagine moving so quickly in so many
directions that you can’t tell which way is up; imagine losing
all sense of direction to the point of being sick and wanting
nothing more than for the ride to stop and let you off. This
is the effect that Irreversible had on me, and, I’ve
heard, on others who saw it. I was warned before I entered
the theatre that this film is graphic and that many critics
have not been able to watch thing. I lasted 20 minutes into
it before I had to take a break and 40 minutes before I left
the theatre for good.
The film’s premise is understandable in a general, universal
sort of way (Who hasn’t wanted to get revenge on someone before?):
A man avenges his wife’s rape by having the rapist murdered.
The story line has some potential, but the actuality of the
film and its effects quickly diverged from what I think of
as being a truly good movie.
Writer and director Gaspar Noé tries
his damnedest from the very beginning to let the audience
know that this is not your typical movie—and he’s quite
successful. The first few seconds of opening credits are normal
enough (aside from all the inverted letters), until they begin—and
continue—to slant toward the right side of the screen. Then
the credits—yes, I’m still describing the credits—begin to
flash, using not-so-subtle strobe effects that are annoying
at best (and at worst are enough to make you sick). The sickening
effect continues as the story begins, with camera shots that
are nothing less than nauseating because the camera is constantly
moving and traversing in such a seemingly impossible manner
that I was left wondering just what Noé was
trying to prove. If he was looking to draw some grand parallel
between the flowing movement of the camera and the uncomfortable
feel of the film, fine, point taken. Now find a new way to
torture your audience, because that got old, and fast.
The sparse dialogue and odd camera movements make it difficult
to tell exactly what’s happening unless you are paying really
close attention—I wasn’t, I couldn’t—and the story is told
in reverse chronological order so that the majority of the
more atrocious events, of which there are several, are captured
toward the beginning of the film. Supposedly there is less
violence toward the end of the film/beginning of the story.
But since I left during the brutal murder scene I missed the
opportunity to see both the less-graphic parts, and the violent
and controversial nine-minute long rape scene (which ultimately
led to the brutal murder) that is considered by some critics
to be scandalous because of its length and intensity.
Irreversible is as disturbing as it is intense. It
attacks your sense of sight, sound—part of the film featured
what can only be described as throbbing music, which served
to heighten my sense of uneasiness—and well being and leaves
you feeling pretty fucked up. I would not recommend this film
to anyone who cannot handle very graphic images and ideas
of torture and/or anyone who is plagued by motion sickness.
Irreversible is not bad for what it is, but it isn’t
for everyone.
—Sarah Andrews
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
