Irreversible

Reviewed by PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * *)


Among the many films the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards has sought to stop us seeing in recent years, this disturbing but deeply interesting French film, which won the Cannes Critics' Week Award in 1998 is probably the most genuinely controversial.

That's a long way from saying it should have been banned, of course, though my view is that the chief film censor is right to have maintained the prohibition against its release in home video formats with all the attendant risks of it being seen by kids.

What makes this film interesting in a way that the miserably inept Baise-Moi was not, is that it forces us to consider our complicity in the film-making process, to watch the process of watching. In narrating its story in reverse chronological order, it shows up movies like Christopher Nolan's Memento for the tricksy, gimmicky concoctions they are. And in showing the consequences of a brutal act before the act itself and placing the happy beginning at the end, French director Gaspar Noe has made a movie which interrogates the normally manipulative processes of screen narrative.

The plot, which unfolds in 12 scenes consisting of 12 unedited shots, may be condensed into two sentences: A couple quarrel at a party and the woman, leaving and walking home is beaten and raped. Her boyfriend, discovering the crime, exacts a murderous revenge.

That outline may seem to give away key plot points, but it holds back two bitterly poignant ironies. One is in the opening sequence, though its meaning only becomes clear later; the other, at the end, in the film's "first" scene, is desperately sad and lends the film an visceral emotional wallop greater than the much-discussed rape. What we see at the film's end is overcast with the sickening knowledge of what will come "after" and in that moment Irreversible comes close to mastery.

It's important to underline that this is a extraordinarily gruelling watch and that the censor has not overstated the case with the wording of his descriptive note. It also bears repeating that misguided attempts to have it banned have generated the public interest to sustain a much wider release than was planned.

Viewers prone to motion sickness will be upset by the camera's dizzying tilts and swoops - and it's hard to imagine anyone not finding the nine-minute rape scene hard to handle. But it's worth noting that the rape is observed through a pitilessly still camera. Noe set the camera running and left the actors to it here, and the result is utterly devoid of manipulative prurience. Most screen rape is thinly disguised male sexual fantasy; this film shows it for what it is - a hateful act of violence.

Irreversible is not a great film; it's only a very good one. But the simply curious would be best to stay away. Consider that a warning.


CAST: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Jo Prestia, Philippe Nahon

DIRECTOR: Gaspar Noe

RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes

RATING: R18, contains brutal sexual violence, graphic violence and sex scenes

SCREENING: Rialto