Irreversible

Noe's second feature is probably the film Kubrick should have made instead of Eyes Wide Shit . And I think it's fair to say Noe knows this. There's a fair amount of plagiarism going on when you take into account the coincidences between this and the more impressive HW fare of the last ten years, but as to who's doing the plagiarising, this is unclear. But you get the distinct feeling that Noe is consciously bating HW, taking elements, plots & scenarios and re-doing them, just better. And in this way Irreversible is, like a long tradition of French(/European) cinema - most obviously Godard, an anti-Hollywood film.

Irreversible is both a struggle and a joy to watch because it does that rare thing in modern big-screen cinema: it challenges. It asks questions that we, as midnight voyeurs, don't want to answer. One moment we are watching Monica Bellucci being violently raped, the next she is dancing seductively for our scopophilic pleasure. One moment a man is violently bludgeoned to death, the next we wish we'd done it ourselves. To top all this, Noe creates a film that has both an explicitly nihilistic conclusion and a happy ending. How can we go away from the cinema feeling good after what we have seen? Yet, on a certain level, we do. Everything is alright in the end (or the beginning anyway), yet we are stuck with the unhappy knowledge that what we are seeing and feeling is not what actually is. It is a lie.

Bellucci & Cassell ("European cinema's dream couple")'s performances are quite literally as naked as they are sublime. Tom & Nicole could only dream...

A must see.

RATING:

(c)Limer 2004