By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Gaspar Noé
Starring: Albert Dupontel | Jo Prestia | Monica Bellucci | Vincent Cassel
Country: france
Year: 2003
Running time: 94
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0274497
Esme says: “Okay, holy Christ, IRREVERSIBLE was b r u t a l. If you can survive the first couple of scenes (incredibly, it gets gentler, sweeter and lighter as it goes backwards), this is a really interesting movie. I don’t think I have ever seen so many testicles in one movie either. This is a story, told backwards, of the brutal rape of a woman, and her boyfriend and ex-boyfriend hunting down the perpetrator to mete out vigilante justice. When it is all over, and you go back to the beginning, which is really the end, you are quite surprised by the actions of the up-to-then more reasonable of the two men. Watch it if you dare, or are a shameless gorehound, like myself. ?? cats, I really can’t say. Why was that scene so harsh? Anybody?”
Laura says: “Much has been made of two scenes of shocking violence since IRREVERSIBLE debuted to walkouts in Cannes, but in a time when the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl can be viewed on the Internet, one must remember that director Gaspar Noe is presenting fictional images to support his cynical response to Stanley Kubrick’s hopeful 2001. Working, like MEMENTO,
with 10 ten minute scenes shown backwards (Noe even has fun with his audience by beginning his film with its end credits scrolling backwards) and like Hitchcock’s ROPE, in uninterrupted takes cut together against dark backgrounds, Noe proposes that rather than advancing, humankind has regressed to a bestial state.
Scene two may be the more horrific of the film’s two visceral assaults. After wrapping the first scene by floating his camera out of
Philippe’s window to spiral above a whirling police light, Noe takes us on a descent into hell visualized like an amusement park’s horror house and scored with a riff on the portentous opening music from THE SHINING. An out-of-control Marcus interrogates men engaged in various sex acts as to the whereabouts of Le Tenia/the Tapeworm (Jo Prestia, FEMME FATALE). Pierre trails behind, trying to reason with his friend. The dungeon-like interior is lit by strobing red light as Noe’s camera jerks
around, giving us just enough of a view to understand what’s going on. Marcus goes downstairs and discovers a suspicious couple of men and attacks, but his arm is broken viciously in the melee. Diminutive Pierre then picks up a fire extinguisher and literally bashes the face off of Marcus’s attacker, wielding his weapon like the bone used by 2001’s ape. Not until the horrific
rape of scene six do we discover that Pierre killed the wrong man as Le Tenia watched from behind.
The camerawork throughout the rest of the film is more conventional, although no less artful. Thomas Bangalter’s drill hammer
score announces the part of the film we’ve come to dread, having already seen its bloody aftermath. Noe follows Alex from behind, then fixes his camera as a witness to the gut-wrenching violence visited upon her. The only diversion is the appearance of a male pedestrian at the end of the tunnel whom only we see appear and just as quickly leave, perhaps symbolizing both Noe’s further disgust at the human race and his premonition of a likely reaction by his audience to bolt from the theater.
Now we can breath a sigh of relief and see how Marcus’s misbehavior at a party caused Alex to leave without her men and cross
beneath a busy street using an underpass a stranger ironically indicates is safer than crossing aboveground and the playful conversation amongst the three on the metro on the way there. Intellectual Pierre despairs over his inability to please Alex sexually and teasingly (or not?) calls Marcus an ape while Alex informs them both that women make all the decisions in the area of procreation, an advanced notion considering Noe began the film with a character who impregnated his own daughter. The film’s ending/beginning shows domestic bliss between Marcus and Alex and Alex discovering she’s pregnant after taking a home test straddling a toilet (another Kubrickian reference?). Noe tips his hand with the poster of 2001’s star child over the lovers’ bed before his last idyllic scene ends with a spiraling camera over a children’s lawn sprinkler that evolves into the eye of a galaxy.
Noe’s disturbing and provocative film presents a simple idea in so bold a style that one is forced to reflect upon it. If the purpose of art is to elicit emotion, IRREVERSIBLE delivers.” 4 1/2 cats