Directed by Gaspar Noé | written by Gaspar Noé | starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Jo Prestia... | Running time 97 min.

Review by Rina H.

Titled the “most walked-out-of movie of the year” by American magazine Newsweek, Irréversible was the most controversial and shocking movie at Cannes in 2002.
With on one hand graphic violence and an eight minutes long rape scene and on the other hand interesting camera shots and a high amount of realistic flair. the movie split its audience into two camps.

The story can be told in a few sentences. After a conflict with her boyfriend Marcus (Vincent Cassel) at a friend’s party, Alex (Monica Bellucci) leaves to walk back home. On her way she is brutally raped and beaten up by a man (Jo Prestia) in a lonely underpass and falls into a coma. Driven by rage and a desire for revenge Marcus and his friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) search for the rapist and turn into cruel and brutal animals themselves.

Director Gaspar Noé decided to tell his story backwards, similar to Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In doing so, he shows the viewer the truth of the tagline of the movie: "Time destroys everything!"

At the beginning of the film we see brutality, murder and rape. At the end we see the time before all these events: Alex, a young and beautiful woman who just found out that she is pregnant with her boyfriend Marcus’s baby. But time destroyed everything.

Irréversible is brutal and disturbing indeed. It makes you cringe and leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling not only afterwards, but also while you are watching it. It is not a film for people who are easily offended by a detailed portrayal of violence. Many critics complained about the exaggerated use of it. But Noé says that he does not like the way brutality is often neutralized in cinema to the point that it cannot be called scandalous. He asks whether there is another way to show violence other than portraying it as repulsive and destructive, and whether everything in cinema has to look aesthetic.

One can definitely say that Noé does everything he can to make the viewer feel as uncomfortable as possible. On the imdb.com trivia section you will read that during the first 30 minutes he used a noise with a frequency that evokes vertigo, sickness and nausea in humans.

In addition to that, the camera work at the beginning is a mixture of frantic and discordant impressions. It represents Marcus’s emotional state, his fury and vindictiveness while searching for the man who raped his girlfriend. As the film marches towards its end, the camera shots become more restful, representing the calm before the storm. What is truly impressive is the absence of actual cuts in every single scene.

In my opinion Noé made a good point of showing how violence can affect every one of us, even if we don't expect it, but he also shows how seeking revenge can make us blind to our own ideas of morality.

Noé himself admits that the mostly improvised dialogue in his movie, which he wrote on set during the shooting, is quite shallow, but he thinks that this helps to make it appear more realistic.

I would agree that the film benefits from its realistic depictions of not so serious conversations between friends or of moments within a relationship. However, I found the characters to be not subtle enough. It seems that Noé wants to use their actions as some kind of "exaggerated metaphor" of the type of reactions that an encounter with violence can evoke in people. He says that his movie “is not a movie of reflection but a movie of instincts”, and Irréversible does in fact appear to live more in its powerful pictures than in its well-written script.

But branding Irréversible as only a provocation without any substance would be the wrong thing to do. Noé does have a message and he conveys it with brutal force.

His film might lack in certain aspects but it is worth discussing.

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