Irreversible Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)February 26th, 2003
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There isn't a warning strong enough to prepare you for Gaspar Noé's Irreversible. But it's not because of the now-infamous graphic violence or brutal rape scene, which had people fleeing, presumably with their hands either up in the air or over their eyes, from its Cannes premiere last year. The film, which is dizzying, shocking and fucking beautiful, is not the sort of thing you'll want to witness from the front row if you get sick on amusement park rides. And if you're offended by violence on screen, especially rape, it's best viewed from a theatre showing something else.
Like the wildly popular Memento, Irreversible is told backwards, yet it does one major thing differently to up the ante. The film is comprised of 12 scenes that take place over one day, and each is shot in a single, long, continuous take (I love that shit). Irreversible is also different from the carefully penned Memento in that most of the dialogue is improvised by its actors. Writer/director Noé had only a three-page outline for a script when shooting started. Those two reasons alone should be enough to make any serious film buff want to see Irreversible, but there's even further motivation for the more demented of you: Noé is one sick bastard. His Cannes-winning movie I Stand Alone had a warning nearly as large as the title of the film on the poster, and he was thanked in the credits of Baise-moi. Baise-moi, for Christ's sake.
Story-wise, Irreversible might seem a lot more like a Memento rip-off than it really is. They're both rape-and-revenge tales (a la Death Wish) that feature bloodthirsty male characters trying to hunt down the men who violated their women but aren't really sure if they're on the right track. It all starts, after the backwards closing credits, with Marcus (Vincent Cassel, Read My Lips) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel) leaving a club called Rectum amidst vast confusion and the lights of both the police and an ambulance.
Actually, if you think that's chaotic, you're in for a wild trip in Irreversible's next scene, which shows Marcus and Pierre heading into the club to look for a man called Le Tenia. Rectum is a cavernous gay/S&M venue, and as we progress in our journey through its labyrnthine layout, Noé never stops moving, tilting and panning. It's almost like the camera is a hot potato that he tosses into the air after holding it in his hands for the briefest periods of time. There's also a lot of rumbling bass and frightening, droning music, but the visuals are so whacked out that you might not even notice it. And at the end of this seemingly endless catacomb of depravity, there's an incident of violence that actually made my stomach lurch - which rarely happens to me.
As the scenes progress, we learn that Marcus and Pierre are best buds, and we also meet Marcus's girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci, who's married to Cassel in real life). The centerpiece of Irreversible is a scene where Alex, after leaving a party due to a drug-induced quarrel with Marcus, is anally raped and beaten in what might be the only static shot of the entire film. It looks, sounds and feels so real, and it's very, very tough to watch. Oh, and it goes on for about 10 minutes, too.
Noé's camera movement finally settles down once Marcus starts downing coke at the aforementioned party. The writer/director/editor/cinematographer/cameo actor shows absolutely no restraint here, which actually makes his film more interesting, as opposed to, say, Baz Luhrmann, who made Moulin Rouge horrendously unwatchable. The messages here (hammered home with title cards) are hardly subtle, nor are the camera pans toward the ceiling at the end of every scene, as if we're watching during a descent into hell. Still, Irreversible certainly more than makes up for two months of shit like How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days.
1:39 - Not Rated
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