Release Date: March 7, 2003
Starring: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Duponetl, Philippe Nahon, Jo Prestia
Directed by: Gaspar Noé
Written by: Gaspar Noé
Distributed by: Lions Gate Films
MPAA Rating: NR
Readers may remember first hearing about Irreversible during the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, at which the controversial film received its premiere, because audiences were walking out of the screenings in disgust. This was surprising for a couple reasons, not the least of which was why these viewers chose to make an early exit: the film contains a now-infamous nine-minute rape scene about halfway through its 95-minute runtime, perhaps an objectionable scene in its own right but certainly not in the context of the movie or the Cannes audiences.
These were festival filmgoers, and film festivals are notoriously places where filmmakers will push the envelope of convention. More than that they were European filmgoers, who have notoriously fewer inhibitions about sexual activities than their North American counterparts. And more than that, by the time audiences get to the rape scene in the middle of Irreversible, they’ve already had to watch a number of disorienting, disquieting scenes (including one in which a homosexual man is bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher, after he has pinned another man, whose arm is broken, to the ground, with the intent of anally raping him).
Why audiences stuck with the movie for another 45 minutes, only to walk out in the middle, is a mystery, but then, so is most of Irreversible, which seems to have been made by director Gaspar Noé simply with the intent of being controversial, or perhaps pushing the envelope, as filmmakers are sometimes wont to do (especially at film festivals, and often with the implicit bargain that audiences will put up with their mucking about). He fully succeeds at the first and partially does so at the second, but the combination of the two does not always make an excellent movie, and Irreversible is one of those less fortunate cases.
The film is told in backwards order, the same dicey but clever narrative gamble made by Christopher Nolan in 2001’s Memento, and on occasion in several other films since then. It’s more of a gimmick in Irreversible than it was in Memento, designed to emphasize the film’s theme that time destroys all things (Le temps détruit tout, as the ending placard reads), and it isn’t really related intrinsically to the story the way it was in Memento.
Here, the story involves a young woman, Alex (Monica Bellucci, the French starlet who was first exposed to American audiences in 2001 in Brotherhood of the Wolf), who is raped and murdered in a pedestrian underpass moments after leaving a party that she had gone to with her boyfriend, Marcus (Vincent Cassel, who is perhaps most memorable to American viewers as the flamboyantly gay Duke of Anjou in Elizabeth), and her friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel).
Neither Marcus nor Pierre are suspects, but they are keen to take revenge on the man who had his way with Alex -- a shady character of the Paris underworld known only as the Tapeworm (Le Tenia, played by Jo Prestia). This revenge takes place at the beginning of the movie, before the audience even knows what’s happening -- much the same way that Joe Pantoliano’s character was shot in the head in the very first scene of Memento. But whereas Memento’s opening scene eventually served as a fantastic moment of realization for the viewer (“Ahh! Now I understand!”), the opening scene in Irreversible deprives the viewer of the vicarious satisfaction that would normally come from watching a vicious rapist-murder meet his grisly demise.
Irreversible is perhaps the first feature-length film to be told in an anti-chronological manner since Memento, which is why it invites so many comparisons, but Memento is a far better film. Perhaps it’s because Irreversible looks as though its director of photography was a housefly. In fact, it was shot by Noé, along with Benoît Debie, but the camera almost never stops moving, much as it wouldn’t if it were strapped to the back of a restless insect. It’s the worst in the first few scenes, which involve heavy usage of strobe lighting and bizarre, otherworldly sound effects -- the combined effect is slightly nauseating, although not in the literal meaning of actual vomit, but rather in the sense that it is sickening to see Noé resort to the equivalent of student-level film grammar. The story and themes are already simple enough that Noé didn’t need to obscure them with a pretentiously film-schoolish method of expressing them -- especially since it’s impossible to miss his ending placard (unless, of course, you’ve walked out of the theater in disgust halfway through).
The camera does stop during the nine-minute rape scene, which some critics have decried as horribly voyeuristic (although the more sensible ones, if it is possible to be more sensible when it comes to anal rape, have pointed out that much is left to the imagination). In general, the camera seems to move about less as the film progresses -- or, chronologically, as things move backwards. Noé’s jarring camera movements are thus analogous to the characters’ distance from some semblance of normalcy. In the final scenes (which actually “happen” first), for instance, the camera isn’t terribly wobbly; onscreen, Alex and Marcus lie naked in bed, playfully cuddling as they prepare for a party later that night. In the first scenes (which come last), the camera is all over the place, but by this point in the narrative, Marcus and Pierre have lost much of their self-control in their bloodthirsty quest for revenge (Pierre much later than Marcus).
There are these interesting touches in what is otherwise a very crude movie (like how the opening titles are written backwards, and then, a few minutes later, a shot in which the word POLICE is spelled out backwards on the hood of a squad car, as if seen in a rear-view mirror). But overall the movie is too crude to enjoy. Noé’s chosen theme, that time destroys everything -- a cold take on the natural weathering process -- is hardly revolutionary, and the film’s most satisfying moment comes five minutes after it has begun. The rest, then, will be for those who are not easily unsettled and have a peculiar enjoyment in watching disorienting images.
all contents © 2003 Craig Roush