DVD Review: Irreversible

Warning: This movie contains ONE very gruesome violent scene, ONE rape scene and several sex scenes. Partial and full frontal nudity (both male and female) should be expected. Heck, it's French.

I can't lie. I feel cheated. Very bloody cheated. I've just spent the better part of 90 minutes alternately being dizzied and making incredulous faces in front of my TV. The reason for all this of course, is what some people have hyped as the sickest (and best example thereof) piece of film they've ever seen: Irreversible.

My response after viewing is this: man am I disappointed. Not even Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers, Les Pacts de Loups) and the always delightful Monica Belucci (Les Pacts de Loups, The Matrix sequels) managed to really carry it off. By now I'm aware that I am deliberately spitting in the face of the legions of fans out there. Well this is only my opinion, and in my opinion this is an art experiment with some violence, sex and lots of shots of male penises.

Irreversible is told backwards, much like the slightly earlier (and to me way better) Memento. There isn't really any way to tell you how the story refolds without giving everything away, and trust me there isn't much to give. Buzz on the internet has focused on two things: the violence and the supposed artsiness of it all.

Well, here's a reality check. There's only TWO scenes of real violence anywhere in the film **SPOILER ALERT**. One involving Vincent Cassel, as his friend bashes in a pimp's face with a fire extinguisher (with quite believable gory results) and the other involving the rape and sodomy of Belucci's character, Alex. Other than that, there's a lot of nudity (gratuitious if you ask me) and not much else. The violence when it comes looks and feels plausible, and the rape scene probably earns its stripes as one of the longest and gut wrenchingly sickest ever put on film (unless you count in rape pornography, which I'll not talk about today). Oh, there's also a long scene in a gay bar, complete with a self-fisting man. The rest of the film is amazingly humdrum, and after the first 30 minutes you begin to wonder if it'll end, not how it begins.

And now for the artsiness. I'm no great student of the arts, so forgive me my untutored impressions. Telling a story backwards is no easy feat. The director Gaspar Noe makes use of a mind numbingly strenous camera technique as transitions, and after a while you just end up feeling dizzy. Yes, by the end of it you realise that the sunny "ending" is actually the beginning, and the horrifying fate that befalls Alex is a descent into nightmare. Even the tonality of the colours used are so evidently significant. The latter part of the film is in pastel and floral shades, while in the final "beginning" everything is in red and black and orange. As always Cassel and Belucci are more than adequate in their roles, with their passion and emotion very evident and very real. There is also a vast amount of affection/emotion going between the three primary characters (Pierre, played by Albert Dupontel is the third) as Alex's old flame also becomes embroiled in the chaos. Dupontel's main role is unclear at first but as the film progresses you realise that Marcus' (Cassel) character, for all his blustering and anger at the assault on Alex is but a shade of that of Dupontel's. At the end of the day Pierre finally vents his frustrations (caused by his previous break up with Alex) and is the real hero of the tale.

As a film, Irreversible is a slightly pretentious but worthwhile addition to any shock cinema fan. The violence (when it DOES happen) is disturbing, and one can actually feel the difference between the beginning and end. This is perhaps the first time I've actually compared an American film more favourably than a French one! However I have a feeling the director slightly overreached himself on this baby. The narrative could have been tighter, the camera angles not TOO experimental, and the pacing fixed. Perhaps my sister summed it up best:

"It's like having a friend tell you he was in an accident today, but before that he was at the mamak, and he was...."

Tomorrow: Dawn of The Dead (1978) Review

The Ox gives Irreversible a 3 out of 5.