If you make it through "Irréversible", then hats off, because you've just passed an endurance test. But what's the point?
Nihilistic to its core, Gaspar Noé presents the story of a young woman who leaves a party only to be brutally raped and beaten in an underpass. Her boyfriend sets off on a vengeance trip with equally tragic results (furthermore, this is all laid out in reverse order). Noé's using both characters to comment on the randomness and cruelty of our world as well as the calamitous nature of revenge. But this is also a movie that bends over backwards to make sure the audience is disoriented, nauseated, and out-of-sorts to even ingest this kind of subject matter -- and that's what I don't get. The ten-minute sexual assault isn't enough, Noé tells this story with a clear hostility towards his viewers. "Irréversible" is a tale told in a sewer; a gutting, homophobic ninety minutes of utter misery.
That said, I think Monica Bellucci deserves massive praise for her fearless performance during the actual assault. It is agonizing, vicious and unbelievably haunting and it took serious conviction to pull this off.
I've sated my curiosity about this movie, but the chances of revisiting this are nil. Life is already too painful to put up with something like this.
Nihilistic to its core, Gaspar Noé presents the story of a young woman who leaves a party only to be brutally raped and beaten in an underpass. Her boyfriend sets off on a vengeance trip with equally tragic results (furthermore, this is all laid out in reverse order). Noé's using both characters to comment on the randomness and cruelty of our world as well as the calamitous nature of revenge. But this is also a movie that bends over backwards to make sure the audience is disoriented, nauseated, and out-of-sorts to even ingest this kind of subject matter -- and that's what I don't get. The ten-minute sexual assault isn't enough, Noé tells this story with a clear hostility towards his viewers. "Irréversible" is a tale told in a sewer; a gutting, homophobic ninety minutes of utter misery.
That said, I think Monica Bellucci deserves massive praise for her fearless performance during the actual assault. It is agonizing, vicious and unbelievably haunting and it took serious conviction to pull this off.
I've sated my curiosity about this movie, but the chances of revisiting this are nil. Life is already too painful to put up with something like this.