From France with (tough) love

Irreversible

Starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel…

Irreversible

Starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel

Directed by Gaspar Noe

Is there an art to portraying the repulsive?

If not, there’s probably no hope for Gaspar Noe, writer/director of “Irreversible,” a failed experiment from France. His film has audacity going for it, but that’s about it.

Noe has essentially made an exploitation-level revenge film and arranged the sequence of events in reverse chronological order – think “Memento” with a nine-minute rape and beating scene – so as to illuminate the “irreversible” nature of certain acts. By first showing us the extreme violence that overcomes the characters and then the happy life they previously had – and will never regain – the film is supposed to achieve poignancy. But it goes too far in assaulting the audience with violence; Noe may have some filmmaking ability and a talented cast, but he can’t achieve anything if we can’t even bear to look.

The film begins slickly enough with its end credits running in reverse. After they’ve run back, Noe’s reckless camera careens about for a bit, ending up in an apartment were a pathetic, naked old man – apparently a child molester – muses, “Time destroys all things.” We’re then whisked out to the street entrance of the Rectum, a gay club from which paramedics are emerging with men on stretchers. Now comes the first jump backward – suddenly, we’re following Marcus and Pierre (Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel) as they frantically search the debauchery-ridden club for a man they eventually find and brutally murder.

The act is one of the most primal, disturbing and graphically depicted instances of screen violence I have ever seen. And it’s only the first of the horrors to which Noe will subject the audience. Each section of the film is a single, uninterrupted shot that denies cutaways, so we’re spared none of the brutality. Lion’s Gate, the film’s American distributor, didn’t even bother submitting it for a rating – it would have been slapped with an NC-17.

After the murder, we warp back to see the men make their way to the club and, a couple of jumps later, the rape of Marcus’ girlfriend, Alex (Monica Bellucci).

The already infamous rape scene – it really is nine minutes long – is something that human eyes should not have to endure. Attempting a Kubrickian level of objectivity, Noe locks the camera in place for the only time in the film and obnoxiously dares the audience to keep watching for what seems like an eternity.

Afterward, we work our way back through the day, to the sane hours, and really meet Alex, Marcus, and Pierre for the first time. The film tries to further devastate the audience by showing us what happy and carefree people they are when we know the violence and vengeance that’s about to devour them.

One must ask why a film like this exists. Just to be nihilistic? Just to say that evil will go unpunished? That premonitions can’t save us from a future that’s already written? That “time destroys all things”? I think that’s everything.

You’ve been warned.