Monica Bellucci SCENE FOCUS IRREVERSIBLE

SCENE FOCUS  IRREVERSIBLE

Irreversible, it could be argued, attacks the idea that cinema and our experience of it should be enjoyable. The knee jerk response to this is to be outraged at such calculated provocation. Indeed, upon the film’s release in 2002, director Gaspar Noé was labelled every name under the sun – although this only served to cement his reputation. In truth the film flits between outright gimmickry and pure cinema. It is a fluctuating, querulous state both inspired and brazen – almost comically so.

Noé’s feature debut, the little-seen I Stand Alone, is a spiritual cousin to his audacious rape-revenge drama – which ushered in the latest wave of ‘extreme cinema’ in France – even opening with the brief return of Philippe Nahon’s butcher character, before taking off into the chaotic aftermath of a new film.

The aesthetic approach of Irreversible; with its manic camera work, droning score and lurid cinematography, was something not quite seen before. And yet it remains an accessible picture, despite posing as the opposite. One must commit to it, take the plunge and abandon all hope at the door or get the hell out while you still can.

Despite the hype and reputation nothing can prepare one for the audio-visual pummelling Noé sets up. That he cast real life couple Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci was a cunning ruse of devilish proportions.

Most notorious is the rape scene itself. Alex (Bellucci) is the victim of chance having left a party early and coming across a pimp threatening a hooker in a subway. It is here the viewer realises that the man Pierre (Albert Dupontel) has murdered at the Rectum nightclub isn’t the rapist at all.

The real kicker, however, is the ‘happy’ ending where, after 90 minutes of darkness and horror, we are given a seemingly tranquil and uplifting pay off.

The final scene occurs in a busy park with Alex reading ‘An Experiment in Time’ by John William Dunne, while lounging on an orange blanket. It is an ordinary moment of civilised leisure. As we know Alex’s and her partner Marcus’ (Cassel) lives will experience a great tribulation in the near future.

By the time we’ve reached the end/beginning the crazed looping, spinning, twisting camera style has subdued to a great extent into a soft, quiet presence. Now it returns.

It begins with graceful tilts at a restless high angle set to Beethoven’s ‘Symphony N° 7′. We see a blue sky and wisps of clouds before panning to an upside down shot of Alex. Almost immediately the camera pans back out and moves to its previous high position and zooms slowly away.

We leave Alex to her humiliating and terrifying fate and focus on a water sprinkler at centre frame. A hissing sound rises in volume. As children play, running in and out of frame, we become aware not of the action of the figures but the spinning camera, which increases in speed.

The camera makes a final pull away from the sprinkler, back into a glancing long shot of Paris, before returning to the sky and an empty frame. The sound of a film projector running smothers Beethoven’s piece and we’re back in a disquieting and spooky zone. A strobe-light effect takes over. Ran frame-by-frame one can see what appear to be strange, amorphous shapes actually caused by spraying water illuminated by sunlight.

Could we be in the cinematic equivalent of the space in between dreams? Where has Noé taken us? The world formed by narrative is gone. It feels like a cosmos forming and stirring. The director is attempting to make ‘nothingness’ cinematic and sensory. He hasn’t finished with us quite yet, either, as a dramatic full stop is delivered (if it can be called that). Le temps detruit tout. Time destroys everything. But we know Irreversible will begin again.

Posted in: Monica Bellucci