All our actions lead to some response, either in ourselves or in others, and Irreversible is a film about these consequences.It moves backward along the cause-and-effect chain, using the reverse chronology Memento made famous, but where Memento is a puzzle and each scene represents a separate piece, in Irreversible, each scene is a window into a life that doesn’t exist anymore.
The plot is simple: Alex (Monica Bellucci) goes to a party with her boyfriend Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and her ex, Pierre (Albert Dupontel). Marcus gets drunk and stoned, flirts with other women, and is an all-around jackass, until a fed-up Alex leaves alone. On her way to the subway, she encounters a pimp beating one of his prostitutes. After he’s done with the hooker, he brutally rapes and beats Alex. The rest of the story involves Marcus and Pierre’s insane search for this pimp, Le Tenia (Jo Prestia). When they finally catch up with him at a gay club called The Rectum, Pierre, who has been trying to restrain Marcus throughout, lets loose and delivers one of the most vicious beatings ever committed to film.
This film is not for the faint of heart. When Pierre starts smashing Le Tenia in the head with a fire extinguisher, you think he might stop after the pimp is incapacitated, but he keeps on hammering until chunks of flesh start flying off, Tenia’s skull begins to cave in and his jaw seems about to fall off. I have seen many an action and horror film and never have I seen a beating so visceral or so brutal.
The rape scene, besides being simply horrific, required a great deal of bravery from the actors. Bellucci is well known for her beauty, and she has to hide that side of herself as the pimp puts her face down and sodomizes her while covering her mouth to stop her from screaming. She flails her arms wildly, alternately trying to get Tenia’s hand away from her mouth and attempting to push him out of her. Both actors perform convincingly in what must have been a most uncomfortable and emotionally draining scene. Films have been accused of pulling punches when it comes to showing rape, but Irreversible is unflinching in its portrayal. It is hard to put into words how disturbing this part of the film is.
Noe’s direction is confident, although his cinematography is jarring for the first twenty minutes. The camera moves from side to side, it swirls, it does 360-degree turns, and it does become annoying, but it illustrates how frantic Marcus is to extract revenge. Telling the story backwards has its risks and Noe could easily have let the story devolve into a typical revenge flick, but he follows through on his instincts, showing us what was and what now can never be. This creates a sense of loss that could have never been felt had the story been told with a traditional chronology.
Irreversible is startling and probably not a film that all will want to sit through, but coming away from it one cannot help but feel as if one has just watched a tragedy unfold.
