Irréversible

Irréversible is a 2002 French art thriller film written and directed by Gaspar Noé. Starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, the plot depicts the events of a tragic night in Paris as two men attempt to avenge the brutal rape and beating of the woman they love. The film is made up of a title sequence followed by 13 segments made to look like long takes. Each of these segments is either a continuous shot or a series of shots digitally composited to resemble a continuous shot. The story is told in reverse order, with each scene taking place chronologically before the one that precedes it.

Theatrically released in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, Irréversible competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and won the Bronze Horse at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Critical reception was mixed, with praise towards the performances and Noé's direction, but criticism towards its graphic portrayal of violence and rape. American film critic Roger Ebert called Irréversible "a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable". A version of the film told in chronological order, Irreversible: Straight Cut (Irréversible – Inversion intégrale), was released in 2020.

Plot
Alex and Marcus, a young couple, wake up together and discuss their relationship, as well as an upcoming party, while in the nude. Alex reveals she had a dream of herself standing in a red tunnel that breaks in two, before taking a pregnancy test that reveals a positive result. On a public train, Pierre, Alex's ex who is also invited to the party, constantly bickers with Alex over his inability to satisfy her during their relationship, while Marcus expresses disinterest in their squabble. At the party, Marcus gets drunk and takes cocaine, much to Alex's displeasure. She leaves the party, asking Pierre to look after Marcus. Alex descends into a red pedestrian underpass on her way back to the train when she notices a transgender prostitute getting attacked by a man. He immediately turns his attention to Alex, anally raping her before savagely beating her into unconsciousness.

After Marcus and Pierre discover Alex being taken away by paramedics, they encounter street criminals Mourad and Layde, who offer to help them find the culprit. They use an ID left at the scene by the prostitute to locate her. Marcus verbally assaults Concha, the prostitute, and threatens to cut her face open in order to gather that the rapist's name is Le Tenia and that he frequents a gay BDSM club called the Rectum. The men are chased off by other prostitutes; Marcus and Pierre jump into a taxi cab and speed off into the night. When the cab driver doesn't know where the Rectum is, Marcus attacks the driver, stealing his vehicle. The two end up finding the Rectum, with Pierre reluctantly following behind Marcus. Leading the charge, Marcus proceeds to get into a fight with a man he suspects of being Le Tenia, who ends up breaking his arm before attempting to rape him. Pierre comes to his rescue and beats the man to death with a nearby fire extinguisher as the man's companion, the actual rapist, watches in amusement. Marcus is carried out of the Rectum on a stretcher while Pierre is arrested by police.

Meanwhile, in a nearby small apartment, a man named the Butcher, the lead character of I Stand Alone, tells a friend that he was arrested for raping his daughter before dismissing the commotion going on outside.

Cast
Director Gaspar Noé has a cameo as one of the patrons in the Rectum.

Production
Irréversible was originally titled as Danger. Gaspar Noé first found financing for the new title after he pitched the story to be told in reverse, in order to capitalize on the popularity of Christopher Nolan's film Memento (2000).

Irréversible was shot using a widescreen lightweight Minima Super16 mm camera. The film consists of about a dozen apparently unbroken shots melded together from hundreds of shots. This included the infamous nine-minute-long rape scene, portrayed in a single, unbroken shot. Noé said he had no idea how long the rape scene was going to last, as this was determined by Monica Bellucci, who essentially directed the scene, and Jo Prestia, who played her assailant. Noé stated in interviews that during the production of the film he used cocaine in order to help him carry the large cameras needed to capture the rotating shots in the film.

Computer-generated imagery was used in post-production for the penis in the rape scene. Another example is the scene where Pierre beats a man's face and crushes his skull with a fire extinguisher. CGI was used to augment the results, as initial footage using a conventional latex dummy proved unconvincing. During the first sixty minutes of its running time, the film uses an extremely low-frequency sound of 27 Hz to create a state of nausea and anxiety in the audience, as it is not immediately perceptible to the spectator, but enough to evoke a physical response. Quoting Noé, "You can't hear them, but they make you shiver. In a good cinema with a good audio system, the sound can scare you much more than what's happening on the screen." This technique, called Sensurround, involves the intentional use of a sub-audible sound to enhance the spectator's experience of a movie, in this case, deliberately making them uncomfortable (although this would only be experienced in a cinema setting as most home speakers would not emit such low frequencies).

Release
The film premiered in France on 22 May 2002 through Mars Distribution. It competed at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2003 through Metro Tartan Distribution, and the United States on 7 March 2003 through Lions Gate Films. It grossed $792,200 from theatrical screenings.

Irreversible: Straight Cut (Irréversible – Inversion intégrale) first screened at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival after Noe decided to give this version of the film a wider release instead of relegating it to a home release special feature. It was released in Los Angeles and New York City on 10 February 2023.

Reception and legacy
Critical response to the film was divided, with some critics panning the film and others considering it one of the year's best. The film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 126 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.10/10. The website's critics' consensus states: "Though well-filmed, Irréversible feels gratuitous in its extreme violence." The film received three votes in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films and in 2016 was listed by critic Andreas Borcholte as one of the ten best films since 2000.

Audience reactions to both the rape scene and the murder scene have ranged from appreciation of their artistic merits to leaving the theater in disgust. Newsweek ' s David Ansen stated that "If outraged viewers (mostly women) at the Cannes Film Festival are any indication, this will be the most walked-out-of movie of 2003." In the same review, Ansen suggested that the film displayed "an adolescent pride in its own ugliness".

American film critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three stars out of a possible four. Ebert declared many viewers would find the film unwatchable due to the graphic violence, but he also proposed the film's structure makes it inherently moral rather than an exploitation film: "By placing the ugliness at the beginning, Gaspar Noe forces us to think seriously about the sexual violence involved."

Film critic David Edelstein argued "Irréversible might be the most homophobic movie ever made." Noé's depiction of gay criminal Le Tenia raping the female lead, Alex, remains the film's most controversial image. In his defense, Noé stated, "I'm not homophobic", noting "I also appear in Irréversible, masturbating at the gay club", as a means of showing "I didn't feel superior to gay people".

Irréversible has been associated with a series of films defined as the cinéma du corps ("cinema of the body"), which according to Palmer includes: an attenuated use of narrative, assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair. Irréversible has also been associated with the New French Extremity movement.

In 2019, Irreversible: Straight Cut premiered at the Venice Film Festival, an alternate and remastered edit of the film presented in chronological order. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 90% approval rating with an average rating of 6.80/10 out of 10 critics.

Accolades
Irréversible won the top award, the Bronze Horse for best film, at the 2002 Stockholm International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Award by the Film Critics Circle of Australia. It was voted Best Foreign Language Film by the San Diego Film Critics Society, tied with The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares).