Irreversible
アレックス
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A rape told backwards; walk-outs at Cannes, and a nine-minute scene the corpus notes only to name.
Irréversible tells one night in Paris backwards, in long, restless takes that seem unbroken: it begins with its end and ends with its beginning. It opens in a small flat where two men are talking, one of them the butcher from Gaspar Noé's earlier film I Stand Alone, while a commotion builds in the street outside a gay club called Rectum.
In the order things happen: Alex and her boyfriend, Marcus, wake up together in their flat, easy and affectionate. She tells him about a dream of a red tunnel breaking in two, and takes a pregnancy test; the result is not shown, but she seems pleased. That evening, on the Métro to a party, she and Pierre, her former lover, argue about sex while Marcus pays them no attention. At the party Marcus gets drunk and takes cocaine, and Alex leaves alone, asking Pierre to look after him. In a red pedestrian underpass she comes upon a pimp known as Le Tenia beating a transgender sex worker. He turns on Alex, rapes her, and beats her until she is unconscious.
Marcus and Pierre come out of the party to find her being carried to an ambulance. Two street criminals offer to help them hunt the attacker. Marcus threatens the sex worker, Concha, until she gives up a name and a club, Rectum, and attacks a taxi driver to get there. Inside, he picks a fight with a man he takes for Le Tenia, who breaks his arm and tries to rape him. Pierre, the gentle one, beats the man to death. The real Le Tenia stands close by, watching and smiling. Marcus is carried out on a stretcher and Pierre is arrested.
Because the film runs backwards, its last scenes are the morning in the flat and Alex in a park, before the picture dissolves into strobing light and the words 'Time destroys everything'.
Starring
Monica Belluccias Alex
A young woman in Paris who may be pregnant, and who leaves a party alone one night.
Alex’s story
Alex wakes beside Marcus, tells him a dream of a red tunnel breaking in two, and while he is out takes a pregnancy test; the result is not shown, but she beams. On the Métro she tells Pierre, her former lover, that he always focused too much on her. At the party Marcus gets drunk, takes cocaine and flirts with other women, and she leaves alone, asking Pierre to look after him. In a red underpass she comes upon a man known as Le Tenia beating a transgender sex worker; he turns on her, rapes her and beats her unconscious. She is carried to an ambulance. Because the film runs backwards, it leaves her where the day began: in the flat with Marcus, and reading on the grass in a park as children play under a sprinkler.
Vincent Casselas Marcus
Alex's boyfriend, impulsive and careless at the party, who sets out that night to find her attacker.
Marcus’s story
Marcus wakes beside Alex, tender and teasing, and hopes she is pregnant. On the way to the party he ignores her argument with Pierre; at the party he gets drunk, takes cocaine and flirts with other women, and she leaves without him. Coming out, he finds her being carried to an ambulance. He falls in with two street criminals who offer to find the attacker, threatens a transgender sex worker, Concha, until she gives up a name, Le Tenia, and a club, Rectum, and throws a taxi driver out of his cab to get there. Inside, he goes for the man he takes to be Le Tenia, who breaks his arm and tries to rape him, until Pierre kills the man. Marcus is carried out on a stretcher. The real Le Tenia has stood close by, watching.
Albert Dupontelas Pierre
Alex's former lover, a thoughtful, gentle man who follows Marcus into the hunt and kills a man.
Pierre’s story
Pierre was Alex's lover once and is still in love with her. On the Métro he goes on about how he could never satisfy her, and she tells him he always focused too much on her. At the party she leaves, asking him to look after Marcus. After they find her on a stretcher, Pierre is questioned by the police, then tries to calm Marcus and talk him out of revenge, but follows him, reluctantly, through the night. At the club Rectum, when the man Marcus has attacked breaks Marcus's arm and tries to rape him, Pierre beats the man to death. The man is not the rapist, who stands by and smiles. Pierre is arrested.
Jo Prestiaas Le Tenia
The pimp who attacks Alex in the underpass, and who is never caught.
Why it matters
Irréversible is a boundary marker because of one scene: a rape filmed in a single unbroken shot that lasts about nine minutes, with a camera that does not look away. Around 200 people were reported to have walked out of its screening at Cannes in 2002, and critics split between those who found it gratuitous and those who, like Roger Ebert, argued that placing the ugliness first forces an audience to think seriously about sexual violence. The reverse structure is the film's argument. Revenge comes first and is shown to be senseless, since the man killed is not the rapist. Tenderness comes last, when it can only hurt. Critics have also called its gay-club sequence homophobic. What it leaves is a hard question about looking itself: whether a film can convey the full weight of rape without turning a woman's suffering into spectacle.