lightlikecoolwhip This movie was very well-written and well directed (although the camera work began as very disorienting -which I suppose is the point- I got used to it and it added to the overall storytelling) The story was told in reverse very deliberately, to give small, well-crafted tidbits of the big picture and make the viewer feel the intensity of each scene on a much deeper level. The character building was fantastic, which gave a little more of an emotional punch to the tragedy. I usually don't like hard-to-watch movies, but this one was very smartly executed. It was extremely dirty and gritty on a realistic, yet almost psychedelic level. As much as I hate the injustice shown in the plot, I was riveted the entire time.

simon-psykolog The story is told in reverse....This is not just some artistic pseudo aspiration but something that makes a very interesting difference. Because of the reverse order you already know some of the consequences for what is going on. So instead of trying to figure out what will happen you wonder about what has already happened. I found that refreshing - it gave me a feeling of watching it more intensely.The violence and sexual aberration brakes every filmic scale....Was it necessary to depict the horror that can be involved with sexuality in such an extreme way...? How to judge this? I have always thought that showing scenes with intense violent content could be done very effectively in a subtle manner if you have to do with a very skillful director. But not this time. The part of the story that takes place in the nightclub "Rectum" is absolutely brilliant. The dominant red colour that blends with the shadows and erases every idiosyncratic feature of the faces and only lets the lust and perversion shine through building up to a repulsive climax. It´s like taking the trip down to the perverted Freudian "id" where no morality or known norms seems to exist. The super-ego has been cleaved. Scary and strangely fascination at the same time.Then the rape scene.... Was it to be endured because there was actually something new about the dangerous mix of sexlust and aggression that could be learned? Or was it just a director who wanted to provoke? I had to mute the sound and go further away from the screen in order to see it. If you have the slightest experience with somebody who got too "close" to you at a certain time in your life don´t watch this scene...! Don´t!The first half part of the story....Here the atmosphere is permeated with joy, harmony and humour with the couple, that later will go through the living hell, teasing each other. These scenes delivers a sense of tragedy as they are watched with negative sign.I wish I could rate this movie on another scale than good/bad. I am not through thinking about it and still watches different scenes.Regards Simon

cinemajesty Film Review: "Irreversible" (2002) - Taking on a bizarre approach of mixing conceptions of "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999) and "Memento" (2000) to make this picture work for itself in casting real-life married couple Monica Bellucci & Vincent Cassel to portray two Parisian middle class people, Alex & Marcus, going out for party at their friend's. Director Gaspar Noé, frequent guest in Cannes Film Festival's competition since his first feature "I Stand Alone" (1998), polarizes the 55th edition of Cannes with his also originally written film "Irreversible".The editorial intervenes scene by scene in reverse story-telling, exposing one night in Paris for the couple Alex & Marcus, who got separated over a minor dispute to fatal consequences for both characters, which all-time controversial representation of urban underpath rape of the character of Alex, who has not been prepared for a predator of the Parisian underworld with a free path of finishing his business of leaving behind the empty shell of Alex.Director Gaspar Noé gives his main characters no chance of conciliation, seeking no balance nor preaches any mercy that film becomes downhill and out experience, which nevertheless shares some over-stylish camera motions by Cinematographer Benoît Debie and honest acting by the at times over-enthusiastic couple Bellucci & Cassel, who hardly stand a chance to come full circle with their characters of an otherwise weak-on-suspense script that lives from the sensation-mongering violent explosions at the beginning plus the previously mentioned storyline's climatic scene, which at today's standards needed metal objects pushed into human flesh, blood on snow white skin and a limping rapist to come close to even with the audience.What is left of a so-called scandal film of the year 2002 is another acting couple after Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf" (1966), Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman in "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999) and then the not-as-close to a classic considered "Irreversibel", where only a "Memento" (2000) copycat gimmick of telling the story backwards saves the picture from a total fall-out due to cliché-striving screenplay of expected relationship quarrels following into one false move of carelessness, which should have been just taking the cab for woman in an evening dress to get home at night.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

sergicaballeroalsina You know? The thing I most value when I am watching a movie is the chance that catharsis could happen. Something that happens in very few occasions but something that I chase frequently. Then there are the movies that leave me lukewarm, which are the majority. Then there is Irreversible, which provoked in me something resembling an anti-catharsis. I would never have imagined such a rejection for a movie, such a feeling of dirt. Did the movie want to explore the limits of cinema? He succeeded but at the expense of cinematography. I would encourage anyone to ignore such a bad taste movie. The end is not justified. The means are not such. There is controversy and morbid about this film but it has nothing to do with art, I think.