Irreversible (2002)
Cast: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Jo Prestia and Philippe Nahon
Director: Gaspar Noe
Synopsis: controversial Argentine Film gained a big reputation on the festival circuit
Reviewed by: Vasant Nath

Irreversible is a film shot predominantly without the use of a tripod. The camera spirals all over the place and the degree of frenzy in its movement is directly proportional to the tension depicted on screen. However, this frenzy film hits you in the face from word go, because, as you might already know, its beginning is actually its temporal end. This is not so much of a novelty, though, with Christopher Nolan’s Memento successfully laying the ground for this sort of stuff.

Argentinian director Gaspar Noe gives us a simple tale of violent revenge which would have not been much more than a formulaic revenge tragedy had it not been for the backward narration. In the correct sequence, it is the story of Marcus (Vincent Cassel) who seeks violent revenge for the rape of his girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci). What the film sets out to do is very different from what we ad seen in Memento. Nolan had given us a reconstruction of story taken backwards from its violent culmination through a complex web of recollected episodes that slowly expose the elements of the narrative leaving the slightest lingering seed of doubt as to their authenticity. Irreversible does not concern itself with the complexities emerging from the indecipherability of real time and remembered time. Its message is stark. And cynical. Irreversible begins with teeth gritting images of violence and indecency and smoothens itself out into a rosy depiction of hope, new love, and occasionally funny male bonding. However, the film never lets us forget that this is not the true order of things. One thinks of Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, where the Amis describes a strange world where not only does time move backwards, but even the natural contexts of things are reversed. In his novel, doctors break bones, factories suck in pollution and Auschwitz becomes an eerie industrial nightmare that resurrects to life masses of the dead. Looking at the holocaust in reverse exponentially magnifies the horror of it all. Looking at the personal tragedy of two individuals on screen in reverse throws at you feelings of extreme uncertainty and mutability of all that is good. Watching the film is, in a way, like reading the personal biographies of the victims of a plane crash.

The camera work, though meant to reflect the instability and frenzy of Cassel’s character after the rape of his girlfriend, can get extremely irritating. The view is always shifting within a psychedelic montage of brick walls, red bulbs and darkness. You hear bursts of French dialogue. After awhile you find yourself focusing on the sub-titles and not looking at the rest of the screen to give your eves a break. There are these ‘time warp’ sequences, where the camera does a back flip to show a regression to the earlier bits of the timeline, which become more palatable as the film proceeds and the circumstances become calmer. The two violent episodes of the film are fortunately quite close to each other towards the beginning, thus they are over quickly. Plus they happen before you know much about any of the characters, thus the film actually does you a service by telling its tale in reverse. The much talked of rape scene would have been much more difficult to digest had it come at the end after we had got to know more about Alexandra (Bellucci) and her context.

Cassel’s performance as the French cocaine snorting party hopping girl magnet is difficult to assess at first because the shifting camera does not does not stay still long enough for us to see his initial passionate outbursts too well, but later in the film his chemistry with Bellucci is amazing. Not surprising, considering that they are an off-screen couple anyway. Bellucci had a big challenge to face in this film. The rape is shot on the concrete floor of an underpass and is done in a single take that lasts over 6 minutes. Her character’s trauma is conveyed very effectively and one can see the audience cringe for the whole six minutes.

Irreversible is a shocking film, and to use a horrible cliché, is definitely not for the light hearted. If you can sit through the first half hour and aren’t left with a too much of a headache because of the shifty camerawork and the flashing lights, the second half is actually quite enjoyable, but at any rate you will not leave the cinema as a happy bunny.