p r e f e r r e d r e v i e w e r s :
 |
 |
|
You haven't selected any preferred reviewers. To learn more about customizing your experience, click here.
|
|
|
 |
 |
o t h e r r e v i e w e r s :
|
|
|
Dancing_P [ 5.0 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
Last semester, I took a video class and made a short film that parodied all the other pretentious student films I had seen. I essentially built the entire movie around one sight gag that came at the very end; what happened was that I had a great punchline but everything leading up to it was lacking. It seems like Gaspar Noé has taken the same approach with Irréversible, starting out with two key scenes and sketching the semblance of the movie around it. And it's true that the scenes are disturbing, unsettling, violent and wrenching... but the movie isn't. Played in reverse chronology, Irréversible follows Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Alex (Monica Bellucci). Marcus and Alex are in love; they decide to head out to a party where Marcus gets roaring drunk and pisses Alex off. While heading home, she is raped by a man named La Tenia in an underground tunnel. After finding this out, Vincent and his friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) decide to take revenge. The film opens on said revenge, a heinously violent scene set in a gay sex club that should disturb even the most die-hard Italian cannibal movie fans. The rape scene is some 8 minutes long, shot through one unmoving camera. It's obvious that Noé wants to shock and disturb (and not titillate, as some have suggested) and he does, but the film that surrounds it does not do these scenes justice. Any issues Noé would want to have brought up are essentially skimmed over throughout the rest of the movie; its approach to fate, time, issues of rape and anything else is so simple that said scenes fail to resonate. There's little here to differentiate the film from anything Charles Bronson may have made in the 70's. It feels wrong to classify the film as pandering for cheap shocks because I know that's not the intention, but there's little depth to what we ultimately see on-screen. Technically, the film is a stunner, utilizing extremely long takes and some choice CGI; the actors are all terrific... but it all comes down to less than the sum of its parts. It's angry and vicious and disturbing but it never actually gels as having anything resembling a point.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
kcremer [ 8.5 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
This is a disturbingly gut-wrenching movie for the most part. There is a graphic 10 minute rape scene in this, and an even more graphic shot (that seems to go on forever) of a man beating a guy's head in with a fire extinguisher (and not to mention a vomit-inducing 'tour' of a gay club called "The Rectum"). It's difficult to sit through this to the end. However, if you are able to do that, you may understand the reasoning for the seemingly gratuitous violence, and you might even find the movie kind of brilliant, like I did.
This story about a man who seeks revenge on the thug who raped his girlfriend in a subway tunnel is similar to "Memento" (2000) in that it is told backwards, where the ending is the beginning and vice versa. The fact that it's told this way made the movie much more interesting to me and made me look at the story a completely different way than I would have had it been done in chronological order.
Let me also say that the acting and the dialogue are good, but a little hard to follow unless you speak French and don't need the English subtitles.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
reversible [ 10.0 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
Well I gave this a rating of 10 because it has a unique meaning..
Even in the goriest most brutal of the pictures.. this goes from bad times to good times.. I actually watched this movie in reverse to get the forward story and I liked the ending (begining of the story when Alex and her Boyfriend make love and then going on till seeing children playing. It left me with a feeling of hope that how ever bad the world is.. there are always good times to remember.
After the rape scene and the rectum sequence I was shocked and ashamed of being a man. Sadly there are ppl like the rapist who think they can live with all their sins.
That is one of the most disappointing things in the movie that the rapist walks away.
looking forward to more positive movies.
May God Bless u all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
jeff_v [ 5.0 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
Count me as another person who was confused as to who was killed in the Rectum, and who did the killing. I only knew it wasn't The Tenia who got his face smashed in (in a scene that I have to admit I found more gratifying than repelling, since it's the first time in a few minutes that I was able to see much of anything). Overall, the opening Rectum sequence (lovely string of words there) wasn't disorienting in a thrilling sense, but disorienting in an annoying and eventually tiresome sense. Likewise, the film as a whole gradually held less and less interest for me until I found myself straining not to bolt during the flickering white lights at the end. Even after reading extensive discussion of the film in other forums/lists, I'm unconvinced that this was anything other than a jejune stunt from the cinematic equivalent of an Internet troll. It's not that the themes of death to birth, return to Eden, rationality vs. instinct, etc. aren't there, it's that they are unilluminating and manifested in such an overcooked way that they did nothing for me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Weighted Rating | : 6.8 |
| No. Ratings | : 12 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
|
|
|
|