FILM: "Irréversible" (Gaspar Noé, 2002)

French movie brat Gaspar Noé’s controversial second feature is a blistering experiment in how far cinema can push an audience. With its ferocious extremes of style, performance and subject matter, Irréversible takes you right to the edge, bludgeoning the audience into submission through its ingenious structure and sheer force of delivery.


The film opens with an act of violence so appalling that the viewer is rendered immobile right from start. For much of the opening half-hour, Irréversible is almost unwatchable - the camera motion is so frenzied that we are granted only fleeting moments of clarity, creating a nauseating whirlwind of confusion as we attempt to get our bearings on both the immediate image and the events unfolding around us. Indeed, much of what we do see is alternately lurid or pornographic as it becomes apparent that we are following an agitated figure through the seedy underbelly of an S&M club. The soundtrack is not so much a musical score as it is an undulating, sickly throb designed to mesmerise and churn the senses in equal measure. In terms of raw visceral power, it is perhaps the most excessive and deliberately disorientating opening sequence in the history of mainstream cinema.


However, rather than simply being prurient enfant terrible posturing for shock value’s sake, it becomes progressively more apparent as the film wears on that Noé’s abrasive style is a fitting articulation of his protagonists’ turbulent state of mind. At this juncture, the emotions are so fraught that we have no choice but to be plunged headfirst into a nightmarish underworld of pimps, whores, hermaphrodites and bloodshed with absolutely no hope of reprieve. This is the point of no return – the final resting-place of all that is unstoppable or inevitable. Casually flipping received notions of temporality on its head, the film then plays backwards in segments which show the course of events leading up to this explosive conclusion. We learn that the horrific murder occurs as revenge for the rape of a young woman (Monica Bellucci), whose hot-tempered boyfriend (Vincent Cassel) and former-lover (Albert Dupontel) allowed her to leave a drug-fuelled party alone, unwittingly setting in motion a course of events that would lead to her attacker’s grisly demise at the hands of her previously mild-mannered ex. Before this, the trio were chatting casually on a subway train about their respective sexual prowess; prior to this, the couple was alone, a picture of contentment with no knowledge of the horror to follow. Sure enough, Noé’s stylistic frenzy dims as the day wears on, and we are gradually led back to a peaceful state of equilibrium.


Central to the film’s undeniable potency is the much-discussed rape scene that provides its dramatic crux. Dispelling any notions of titillation that can arise from casual cutaways, the episode is filmed in the most harrowing and uncompromising method imaginable: in real time, from a single static angle on the ground. Straw Dogs it isn’t; the resulting scene is one of the most gut-wrenching and uncomfortable experiences a viewer can imagine. Punctuated by Bellucci’s agonised screams, it seems to go on forever. Just like the act itself, the sequence is brutal and relentless - its single shot ultimately renders the viewer as helpless as Bellucci as she is mercilessly pinned to the floor; in the background, the outline of a passer-by tantalisingly shrinks away without intervening.


However, what’s perhaps most fascinating about Irréversible is the way the film plays with the conventions of narrative form. Unlike the mischievous trickery of Christopher Nolan’s similarly-structured Memento, Noé allows the viewer to establish the benefit of hindsight from the very beginning, so that at every turn we are made agonisingly aware of how the most incidental of decisions can influence the entire outcome of a situation. The cumulative effect is a shattering portrait of the inescapability of fate - by the time we arrive back at the serene starting-point for the day’s events, its dreamy imprudence seems almost like a happy ending. Of course, following temporal convention through the previous sequence of events, this is a respite of sorts: the last vestige of calm before the storm. As if to jolt viewers from this false sense of security, Noé’s closing shot of a contented Bellucci then begins to whirl violently, accelerating to such speed that it metamorphoses into a nasty strobing effect which eventually gives way to one final nihilistic proclamation: “Time destroys all things”.


For such a bold experiment in the form, it’s almost inevitable that Irréversible has its weaknesses: the inverse-development of each protagonist is perhaps not as fully realised as it might have been, with both Bellucci and Dupontel’s characters being particularly ill-defined as far as personality and motivation are concerned. Equally, the numerous ‘ironic’ forecasts scattered throughout the day have a tendency to seem less like ominous portents than glib afterthoughts on the part of the director. However, the responses of Bellucci and real-life partner Cassel to such fraught circumstances are remarkable, with the latter particularly impressive as his initially obnoxious personality gradually softens until we are finally able to see in him what she does during the couple’s tender love scene.


Jettisoning anything vaguely regarding subtlety in favour of an admirably-sustained sense of confrontation, Noé’s film is at once a primordial assault and a devastating cinematic experience. A true headfuck in every respect, Irréversible is not the kind of film most would choose to watch repeatedly but, as the title suggests, once seen it’s never forgotten.