"Irreversible"

Rather than hurrying past, Alex pauses, horrified by this sudden eruption of violence. It's her final mistake. Intrigued by this stranger, Le Tenia lets the hooker go and turns his attention to Alex. The camera gets within two or three yards of them and remains motionless for the rest of the scene. We watch them head-on as Le Tenia mocks and teases Alex, then forces her down to the pavement and rapes her from behind, taking his time while she screams and resists, and then beats her ruthlessly when she tries to escape after he has finished. It's just nine minutes, but it feels like an hour, or a year. It was enough time for me to think about my life and wonder how I wound up as the kind of middle-aged ex-bohemian who would go to see a movie like this on purpose.

I'm serious about that; the scene lasts so long and is so difficult to watch that you start to question the nature of your own response. Nick James, the editor of the British film magazine Sight & Sound (for which I have written) recently wrote that Noé justifies the scene by focusing on rape as an act of violence and terror, not an erotic act. Of course that's how we're supposed to think about rape, and the scene is indeed violent and terrifying, but I think that interpretation dodges its real ambiguities. The harsh fluorescent lighting and lurid colors suggest a porn video. Bellucci (who, by odd coincidence, also stars in this week's Hollywood release "Tears of the Sun"), already a strikingly beautiful woman, is almost outrageously sexualized by a clingy silk dress that dramatically outlines her nipples and drapes the curves of her buttocks. As Le Tenia, former Thai boxing champion Jo Prestia exudes physical menace but also undeniable allure; he has the bruised masculine beauty of a beefier, coarser Jean-Paul Belmondo. If the scene were reconstructed as nasty, rough sex between consenting adults rather than a heinous assault, many of us would be drooling to watch it.

This twisting of the knife, this desire to engage our sympathies and desires and then subvert them, is at the heart of "Irreversible," in much the same way that anal sex, from the perspective of mainstream heterosexuality, might be understood as a disturbing but seductive perversion of "normal" intercourse. Another Sight & Sound critic, Leslie Felperin, offered a far more complicated and, I think, more honest response to the "Irreversible" rape scene. She discussed the fact that many women occasionally fantasize about being sexually dominated or even raped, and admitted that the scene's "seductive ambiguity" provoked from her "a certain sado-masochistic engagement."

I think that's exactly right; what makes "Irreversible" seem alternately so brilliant and so overwrought is that Noé tries to pull multiple switchbacks of that kind, to implicate us in his sadomasochistic game, in virtually every scene. At first we are repelled and horrified by Marcus and Pierre; then, once we learn what has happened, we take their side and share their desire to mete out retribution. Later still, as we begin to understand the events leading up to the rape and its aftermath, we understand how each of them, through his own carelessness and selfishness, helped set the scene for catastrophe.

Cassel, one of the finest contemporary French actors (and Bellucci's off-screen partner), plays Marcus as an impulsive, charismatic man-boy, not too far from Hugh Grant's "About a Boy" character. His laddish behavior at the party, snorting coke and smooching random chicks in the bathroom, is specifically what propels Alex out into the night alone for her fateful encounter with Le Tenia. Pierre, who used to go out with Alex, is quite different from Marcus but arguably not an improvement. A hangdog, passive-aggressive type, he's constantly trying to drive not-so-subtle wedges between Marcus and Alex, jokingly harassing them to tell him whether Marcus has ever successfully brought her to orgasm (Pierre evidently never could, and you're not surprised).

Inevitably, "Irreversible" will be understood by cinéastes as belonging to a recent tradition of French flicks that offer a nihilistic, arty blend of sex and violence. They might mean Catherine Breillat's "Romance" and Coralie Trinh Thi and Virginie Despentes' neo-porn "Baise-Moi," along with, perhaps, Bruno Dumont's "Humanité," Claire Denis' cannibal allegory "Trouble Every Day" and Noé's earlier film, "I Stand Alone." I suppose there's something to that, but it's the kind of canned analysis that doesn't tell you much, and I see more differences between those movies than similarities. Denis and Dumont are major international film artists, whereas I'm not convinced by Breillat, and "Baise-Moi" is just unwatchable crap. Noé isn't a kid (he'll turn 40 this year) but he's still young as a filmmaker; he may yet learn to control his desire to sear the audience's eyes out with a red-hot poker before he's even started telling a story.

Some of the viewers who walk out on "Irreversible," or who never go in the first place, would find the later/earlier sections of the film, before Marcus and Alex meet Pierre and go to the party, surprisingly lighthearted and affecting. Still, the symbolism never quits: Marcus wants to have anal sex (but doesn't insist) and during a nap Alex dreams of being in a red tunnel that then breaks in two. But we watch these carefree, leisurely scenes -- they horse around and make love, Alex takes a shower and regards herself gravely in the mirror -- not with foreboding but with a kind of joy. Everything has been undone, everything has been forgiven. Noé has fucked us up the ass and made us like it.

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