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Irreversible
on DVD (2002)
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| Starring: |
Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Stephane Drouot, Mourad Khima, Jo Prestia |
| Director: |
Gaspar Noe |
| Studio: |
TARTAN VIDEO |
| Run time: |
95 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| User collections: |
Some disturbing, some funny, all brilliant, cool films from around the world, An emotional punch, My Top Films (so far), Crabsticks, Good, Bad and Ugly !, Shocking and Affecting, There is more to cinema than Hollywood!, Films that stay in your mind - messed up, Mind Blowing Films |
| Genres: |
Drama, Gay/Lesbian, World Cinema |
| Languages: |
French |
| Subtitles: |
English |
| Released: |
26/05/2003
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Brief synopsis of Irreversible
After what would normally be the end credits (which run backwards), IRREVERSIBLE begins with a heated hunt through a gay S&M club. It is a chaotic sequence shot from a wildly spiraling camera seamlessly edited together to appear as one single shot and culminating in one of the most violent murders ever portrayed on celluloid. Following this crescendo, Gaspar Noe's (I STAND ALONE) film uses a reverse narrative structure similar to MEMENTO through which the audience learns the motivations for the murder and the relationships of three parties directly involved, the beautiful Alex (Monica Bellucci) and two men who adore her (Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel). The frenzied style of the opening gives way to increasingly static camera work throughout leading to an idyllic final shot of Alex, who the audience has long known is a doomed woman, set to Beethoven and alive with color and youthful innocence otherwise absent from this bleak urban nightmare. The film disregards conventional editing by ending each scene with a dizzying camera whirl. Since each scene is intended to look like a single take (although there are seamless cuts throughout), this gives the film the appearance of one continuous shot.
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
Love it or despise it, Gaspar Noé's incendiary follow-up to Seul contre Tous is hard to watch, and, once seen, hard to forget. An intense and unflinching nightmare of rape and revenge, it is a haunting meditation on the fragility of life. Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci bare their souls magnificently as a middle-class couple who are plunged into a personal hell after Bellucci is brutally raped and left for dead. Utilising inventive cinematography that tints every scene with acid-trip dementia, the film unfolds in reverse, Memento-style, to embrace and deconstruct the whole spectrum of human emotion. From the opening explosion of tragic retaliatory violence, each single-angle sequence takes a step back in time, illuminating effect, then cause, before finally restoring the tranquillity and innocence that preceded these terrible acts. It's distressing viewing that requires a strong stomach, yet, for all the feature's controversy, it never titillates. Instead, Noé delivers a masterpiece of naked honesty that demands its audience be affronted, rather than entertained, by the horrors it depicts.
Rolling Stone
"...Noe's considerable accomplishment is to examine the relationship between life and art, time and memory. IRREVERSIBLE means to knock you for a loop. It does..."
Entertainment Weekly
"...An amazing, and profoundly disturbing, experience....[Noe is] a new kind of film wizard: a poet of apocalyptic shock..."
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