Irreversible Critique

Original Title: Irreversible

Spanish Title: Irreversible

GENRE: Drama

THEME: Revenge, violence, controversy, rape, nihilism.

COUNTRY: France

DURATION: 97 minutes

YEAR: 2002

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci, Albert Dupontel.

Synopsis:

Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel) break into the gay club "The rectum" in search of the rapist Alex (Monica Bellucci), Marcus and former girlfriend of Pierre, to avenge what happened hours before a underpass squalid streets of Paris.

Review:

When I inquired about my choice to start out Blogdecine.info would be the correct commenting "Irreversible" by Gaspar Noé never pondered that its review would be so crude, even more than the first time I saw her. And is that with age one becomes more impressionable and, if anything, less tolerant of visual impacts, because the tape is clearly beginning to end and a good host in the face: millions of needles on the wall and thousands turning color everywhere with more than annoying pain in the middle of consciousness ...

If something is worth Gaspar Noé is a resource in the first home video sequences, many frantic handheld camera movements in a seedy gay venue in what looks like a descent into the vicious circles of Dante's hell and good effect of suggesting images by hundredths of a second hostile to think, have I seen what I believed to see or is my diseased mind that I kidding? And all this to open your mouth the first few minutes of footage ...

But as the film goes, chaos begins to stabilize and the script begins to take shape (the movie begins at the end, like Memento, makes it even more difficult to assimilate), we find any suggestion that the initial visual becomes an explicit and unique moments measured by the director to get our attention: the sequence level of the party-orgy at home or the famous scene Monica Bellucci exalted sadly, something that deserves a special mention.

Surely the time will make the scene Bellucci's suffering becomes blunt, becomes less hard, less violent, at least compared with other controversial scenes in contemporary cinema, but what is clear is that the stiffness and coldness with that was raised almost ten years ago still stand on the hair of the rump. The first time you see the scene (and one is already more or less trained in savage film) the power of images, the fixed plane, the visual magnetism makes you keep looking ... a third party, gossip and morbid witness violence more free, abject and sadistic raised in the most sterile as possible so that you avoid looking away even if the rejection is evident.

The shock is this scene, whose sublime performance by the actress throws you to the most violent hyperreality, is what has made it one of the most hated and admired films in cinema history, but to comply with this and label it for his controversial is unfair to a tape in virulence deliberate abuse and gives a glimpse of how film can affect more than images and words, you get to the "potato", but not for good. Annoying buzzing and chaotic music industrial-noise accompanies rightly Thomas Bangalter times of impact and the cinematography by Benoît Debie says up edges and shadows are complicit in a hostile world the characters live, where stands a huge Vincent Cassel, carefree and childish boyfriend wakes up to find his mad revenge.

Thus, the aftertaste is left at the end of a painful nihilism, "why should I be concerned that whatever you do, feel or suffer will not change the end my sad fate?". That pessimism that gives Bellucci's last scene on the lawn, happily reading, oblivious to the pain and torture, is what makes the synthesis of the film and leaves us feeling that well they start the day, anything can go wrong into a bloody outcome, and physical and moral devastation of each and every one of the characters ... including the damn audience.