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IRREVERSIBLE Send This Review to a Friend
Don't be fooled by the pretense that the obnoxious "Irreversible" is a work of art. Running a story backwards doesn't make it artistic. Backwards or forwards, this is offensive, pretentious garbage from France that has garnered attention as controversial. You watch a man having his head bashed and bashed, and worse, there is a revolting, nauseating 10-minute explicit scene in which a woman is raped in the anus with the rapist shouting humiliating obscenities at her while she is screaming in pain and horror. And if that isn't enough, the attacker then beats and kicks her into a pulp.
I have broad tolerance for violence in films if there is an important point. "Irreversible," directed by Gaspar Noé, appears to comment that a few wrong moves combined with chance can wreck lives. Big deal. For that do we need to watch a rape in such vivid detail? The director, hailed by some, has created a film with shock value and nothing more. Even the filming is awful, with the camera so jerky and the screen so dark at the start that one can hardly discern what's happening. That alone is enough to give one a headache.
The cast includes Monica Bellucci, who gets the worst of it, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The whole milieu is epitomized with part of the action at a joint called The Rectum, a name that might also apply as the destination into which Noé can shove his picture.
Human nature being what it is, some will try to stomach "Irreversible," some will call it a perverse work of art and others won't go near it. I sat through it in order to write this review, and it wasn't one of my better days at the movies. A Lions Gate release.
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