Reviewed by Tim Wong

A STAR GRADUATE of Euro-arthouse provocation, Gasper Noé; propelled himself once again into the throws of widespread controversy with Irréversible, which headlined 2003's (now defunct) Incredible Film Festival with two much-debated screenings.


French-based Noé aroused similar attention in 1988 with Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone), a volatile examination of one discarded butcher's tormented rage against the degeneration of France. Seul contre tous contained one especially graphic depiction of gun violence (preceded by a mid-film PSA warning, of all things), yet is more of a working prototype when viewed in context with Noé's most recent obsession to illustrate violence for what it is: brutal, dehumanising, traumatic. As it stands, Irréversible remains the single most experiential, devastating examination of cinematic and sexual violence in modern times; a film of barely-tolerable but urgent importance.

A revenge picture, Irréversible rewinds the horrific rape and assault of Alex (Monica Bellucci), and the ruthless, unrestrained vengeance sought by her lover Marcus and friend Pierre (Vincent Cassell and Albert Dupontel). It's a basic genre-premise that slots right beside such deplorable rape-revenge fare like Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, and more recently, Baise Moi, yet is a film neither indebted nor remotely similar to such base lessons in exploitation. Fundamentally, exploitation can be described as commodifying the obscene – or anything that breaks the tasteful norm. Irréversible, an obscenity by this definition, prompted many to question its place as cinema; predictable, as the obscene has a tendency to disgust or offend. That Irréversible offends us though isn't indicative of a reaction to the appropriation of human suffering; the object of violence in the film, when offered, is neither consumable nor commercial. We're offended because we're aggravated into a state of disbelief that moves to disallow our acceptance of screen imagery – images that appear to transcend beyond the safety of representation and into an experiential space of guilt, dismay and enforced apathy.

Audiences never want to feel guilty, especially when their conception of film spectatorship is as consumers of entertainment. Yet, screen violence has become a commodity for this very reason, its modern format resembling "designer violence", produced to be consumable, desirable, empowering, erotic. Likewise, pornography (in the populist sense) isn't pornographic if it's remorseful, and would only serve to de-arouse our distanced experience by contextualising the constrainment of sexual intercourse. Noé's intention is direct – to authenticate violence, he must disenfranchise the viewer experience of such assumed luxuries as safety, control and familiarity. Of course, Noé must relinquish his audience's notion of control to a point – ultimately, they'll always maintain the right to watch, or not. Those that have chosen to leave their seats in protest or disgust merely proves Noé's point: that consumers of violence only comprehend violence as a commodity.

Implying guilt, in part, is enough to disassociate Noé's film from exploitation. Those who have witnessed Irréversible in its entirety, however, will have encountered not only the brutalising physicality of the film's two pivotal scenes (enough to leave one drained, weakened by the end), but an actualised state of trauma, helplessness, even shame. Still, an imparted sense of guilt alone does not lubricate such a gut experience. Rather, it is Noé's extension of violence beyond the incrimination of guilt, encouraging a forced participation. Not only does Noé want us feel to bad; he wants us to feel responsible too.

It is this participatory brace of violence that sits most uncomfortably with the viewer. Noé's brazen aesthetic decisions are unavoidable and completely non-consensual – a cinematic rape – which is justified through the stagnation that typifies the representation of violence. While difficult to articulate such visceral moments in words, Noé's description of violence is never indifferent when compared to the version of screen violence that allows choice between repulsion and arousal, or both. Indeed, there are no fences in Irréversible; we either watch as accessories (indicting our previous conceptions of violent consumption), or leave in denial (indicting our very ignorance as consumers of violence).

Irréversible is nauseating in this sense, although that we feel like participants is mostly an aesthetic compulsion, beginning with Noé's dizzying, volatile perspective of the universe – a camera that spirals and twists and contorts and fits, plunging us head-first into the chaotic climate of proceedings from the opening. While this disorientation relents eventually, the first half of the film is exhausting, having seized our grasp on control from the outset. The role of sound in the film is equally as unsettling; the throbbing, low frequency drones are troubling, somewhat intimidating, denying us any latitude over the unfolding tragedy. Even on this base level, Noé is already prompting us to reconsider our existing relationship with images of violence, and subsequently, the role that deception, persuasion and idealism has to play in this understanding.

Designed to submerge us into the film's two shocking acts, it's at these moments that we're really coerced into participation. Alex's revenge, taken upon in a fury of hatred and antagonism by Marcus and Pierre (Pierre's anger is repressed; Marcus' over-boils), pursue her rapist to "La Rectum", a gay nightclub where they eventually convince each other that they've found the guilty party. In the ensuing confrontation, Marcus' arm is broken and Pierre intervenes, knocking the "rapist" to the ground, proceeding to pulverise his head repeatedly with the blunt end of a fire extinguisher. The digitally-assisted violence refuses to allow us any breathing space, with force and damage shown seamlessly in profile. At this point, we've already descended into hell (the scene is claustrophobic, saturated in deep red), the camera out of control (like the characters), thrusting savagely in sync with each blow of the fire extinguisher, as if to suggest we're in Pierre's shoes, and that our repression just exploded.

Earlier, Alex leaves a party after an argument with Marcus, taking an underpass home. Making this decision, we know she's doomed, descending (like La Rectum) into a reddened tunnel, a sign that violence is near and present. When Alex is forced to the ground by the pimp "La Tenia", the camera assumes its position, and then is literally placed on the ground (the roughness of movement indicates this), seemingly discarded for the next nine uninterrupted minutes. Here, Noé isn't so much as concerned with the recalibration of accelerated imagery – he'd rather convert our voyeurism into involvement, deliberately restraining our autonomy as viewers so we endure the rape as the victim (through paralysis), but more so as the rapist. When a lone figure in the background momentarily drifts into frame, witnesses the rape in session, and leaves just as quickly, that figure becomes us – committed in the violence, because standing back, watching, and doing nothing is as incriminating as the act itself. We're powerlessness in all of this, perhaps insinuating that Noé is our rapist. Clearly, it's not enough for Noé to simply make a film about violence – the film he makes needs to become the violence itself.

Profoundly, Irréversible employs a reverse narrative: a counter-chronology starting at the end and finishing at the beginning. Christopher Nolan's Memento – an innovative, tightly strung thriller, recalling events backwards in order to resolve a murder plot – is the inevitable comparison, yet in context, is almost a novelty gimmick in relation. Certainly, there's a greater coherency to Noé's film, consisting of a handful of scenes all devised (seemingly) in single, unedited takes, simply inverted in order, with no flashbacks or ulterior subplots to complicate what is essentially a pure subversion of time and place (indicative of the film's statement: that time destroys everything).

Of course, this flipside has a greater purpose – it is Noé's means of isolating the cause and effect of violence within what is traditionally a classical narrative structure. Typically, we champion violence in movies because it is an outcome, and often, we believe we're entitled to it as a form of resolution to what the plot has previously established. Within the revenge genre, a character's suffering needs to take place before the retribution for it to have any payoff – or commodity value – which is inherent to the concept of exploitation. In the case of Irréversible, retribution occurs before the suffering, disconnecting each violent instance from one another, debasing them of agenda and motive. Pared back, the rape and killing become segregated, detached from context, indicative of violence on the whole as an arbitrary, meaningless and wholly inconsumable act.

Given this, Irréversible is an much a critique of violence as a "genre" as it is an anti-violence statement. The mirror image it reflects back on the I Spit on Your Grave family is in fact a polemic against that very brand of Grindhouse/Video Nasty cinema, including even recent attempts to revive a lust for the subgenre, cleverly disguised under broad, potpourri strokes of Japanese steel, Kung Fu combat and retro yellow tracksuits. The inherent problem with Irréversible, of course, is that it is so immediately extreme it may just as easily fall into the very category of snuff/shock cinema it aims to dissect. And despite its cornered recognition as one of the best films of its year (in this writer's opinion, at least), the film is so hopelessly alienating that it may never reach the audience it deserves – regardless of Monica's Belluci's well-marketed assets.

What's significant about Irréversible at an "eye level" is that it's capable of addressing our conditioned understanding of violence; the grey area between the extremities of violent representation, and the grey area personifying our derivative grasp on reality. If there's any provocation on Noé's part, it's to at least engage us in the construction of violence, and then more importantly, reflect on how this alters our existing consumption, assumption and preconception of violent imagery. Ultimately, the film asks us simply to reconsider our perception – or lack of – towards the discourse of violence, and whether or not we comprehend (or wilfully allow) the fact that our experiences derive from sound bites, news footage, television screens and movie scenes. Irréversible summarises this best in its final scenes; the camera spinning rapidly, manifesting into the iris of a closing aperture, strobing to the point where individual frames become visible as if to remind us of the birth of the moving image – itself merely a fabric of individual frames, stills, images and in the end, representations.