I've been away (to the great pleasure of some of you), and thus have no idea if this has been hashed through or not (although I did search "Gaspar" and "Bellucci" and got nothing): Irréversible is a film by Gaspar Noé (of Seul Contre Tous, or "I Stand Alone" fame) which stars Monica Bellucci and her beau, Vincent Cassel. For those who haven't seen the movie, stop here. Go see it. Recover. Then come back to comment. For those that have seen it: Your thoughts? Is it, in both style and content, a work of art? Genuis? Porn? Crap? Banality? Baseness? All of the above? None? The two scenes that stick out for me, are, of course, the opening scene and the 10-minute rape scene, the first scene in film I've ever seen that made me turn off the DVD. If I had been in a theater, I might have walked out; not from prudishness, not at all. It just struck me as so real, so authentic, as to bother me enough to want to go hold my wife and pray for her to both never suffer that type of fate, and for her to never see that movie. Maybe it was the chips and dip, and the early-morning hour, and the emotion and stresses of fam in the Gulf and moving to the UK at that time, but this film really got to me... Also, what about the reverse chronological presentation? Effective? Trite? Your thoughts...
I thought it was absolutely gorgeous. Truly an amazingly vivid piece of cinema. Still not quite sure what might posess a person to tackle such and issue with such straightforwardness, but hey, if artists weren't just a little off kilter, they wouldn't be artists, now would they? I'm not sure why it had to be made in reverse, but it was kinda cool. I think the film would have stood just fine they way it happens, but then again, Irreversable would probably be a bad title for the film if they did it that way. I don't think the way they did it at all deterred from anything, but I don't know if it helped anything, either. I told AFLette after I bought it a while back that she's not to watch it. She has a tendancy to grab a movie at random that she's never heard of and put it in to fall asleep to when I'm at the bar late. And she's particularly sensitive when it comes to graphic movies. She hates them. This movie would definately not sit well with her. Gasper Noe does with visuals what Neil LaBute does with dialogue. I reccommend this film to anyone that I think can stomach it.
I've wanted to see this for awhile. I normally like movies that make your gut wrench and leave you scarred for weeks. If Netflix has it, I'm all over it.
I thought the reverse style was very interesting in that it was a kind of inverse foreshadowing...going back to the quaintness of the morning before the night, so-to-speak, and to be in possession of such foreknowledge, led to a credibility of the preceding events that cannot be touched by normal-chronology films, except upon viewing them again...Noe has removed this step. I guess the first scene and the rape scene struck me as just being so authentic in my imagination...if i were to imagine doing was happens in the first scene to someone, or having what Bellucci goes through happen to my wife, that would be very close to my imagination...I guess that's what disturbed me; it seemed like Noe reached into my head and pulled out my fears, my secret aggressions...for a film to do that is rather extra-ordinary...and sometimes, as in this case, more than moderately disturbing...