Irriversable....OH DEAR GOD!

A tedious steaming dung hill of a film.

But hey, it made me laugh - the fruit-munching monkey boy out of his tree on one line of coke barging into an S&M club and trying to use violence to elicit information – one of the best bits of comedy I’ve seen on screen this week. Laugh? I almost forgot to wince.

The opening violence is so ultra and what had preceded it so stylised that I found I had no trouble watching it. I’ve winced more at moments of casual violence in other films, moments more brutal by being more unexpected but here, my brain just told me I was watching a film and the distance-thing was there and I was looking at the pulped face of the guy and wondering how it was done – make up or mannequin?

This is not about whether we should be allowed to portray/see rape scenes in the cinema – of course we ****ing should! But they should have some merit and this has none. If it’s about that one brutally long rape scene then that one brutally long rape scene should have been shot better because the main thing I was thinking while watching it was the relief at the fact that the camera was actually in a fixed position for so long. Oh, and I also found it funny how her cardy landed in such a perfect position to hide even a hint of her naked breast being shown. Look at me, Mr Noe was screaming with that, this rape is not titillating and if you’re feeling a tingling in your todger that’s your fault, not mine. The only justification I can find for its length is to allow the rapist to sniff his bottle of amyl a few times in a bow to the weird world of David Lynch.

The problem is it’s all down hill after the rape/beating. It’s just boredom boredom boredom. At least the Smack My Bitch Up / Jackson Pollock-esque swirling camera work of the earlier(later) scenes offered the senses something even if it was just assault and battery but after that … crap crap and more crap.

There is something wholly unsavoury about Cassell’s character’s attitude to sex, his blatant homophobia. You get to think that Noe has had the big-e big time to inspire his hate throughout this film. Women are seen as either coy lesbian dancing queens or sucking men’s cocks. Belluci is presented as tauntingly tempting her fate by the provocation of her nipple-erecting dress – she walks brazenly into the cold Paris night without even wearing her cardigan. For ****’s sake, she was asking for it, ask any High Court Judge. As for the men, they’re all AIDs carrying faggots or wussy intellectual types who can’t satisfy a woman. With the single exception of the heroic central character of Cassell, straight as a die but keen for a bout of buggery. And all the justification of the rape scene – why is it buggery? Why up the arse? Would a straight guy not rape Belluci? Or is it that only a homosexual could drop to such depths?

I see no value to this film. No moral value, no artistic value. It is too shallow to be a balance of style and substance (Bradders is spot on with the banality of the tale if told linear fashion and as for the arsey pseudo intellectual wankfest of ideas, dreaming and pleasing and that pile of piss – **** off, please). As for the style … well undeniably there is a style to it, and undeniably there are moments of …technical beauty (?) to what the camera does. But given the way the film is shot we’re in the Shakespeare monkeys scenario – shoot enough film and he’s bound to get a few good shots. So let’s not overly praise accidents, we’re only encouraging more. As for the dialogue – merde! What medieval hell hole did this dialogue crawl out of? It was atrocious. So laboured, so unreal, adding yet more distance to the attempt to assail my emotions. Blood crime? Did those hoods really say blood crime? For **** sake, it’s like they’re speaking a foreign language.

No one should watch this film, for the simple reason that the laws of physics mean it’s 90 minutes of your life you’ll never ever get back. You could be at home cutting your toe-nails rather that wasting your time with this dross. I almost wish I had been. They’ve really grown long and curly recently too.

i would not say tedious i would say shocking. I think there is no way i could ever find that film dull!?! the first half was an assault on the senses. the way the camera moved about. ted harsh red tones. the agressive angry men shouting and (whatever else they might be doing) at each other. It quite physically made me feel sick.

the one thing that keeps coming back to me is if he had been in love with her at the party as he had been when she was naked in the appartment.... well and so on

that film messed me up. I felt too queasy to eat for five hours after the opening. i think i've even been dreaming about it.

honestly aside form the mildly touching scenes at the end (start!?!) that film was a waste of a few hours of my life and i want them back!

the film means to shock you. but the method just distances me. and so, as i said, i found tedium.

oh, and the pulped face - my make-up or mannequin comment. digital effects.