A little "Eyes Wide Shut", a little "Last House on the Left", an extremely tough rape scene, an extremely ugly head-splitting-scene. And a big dose of arthouse pretentiousness. Voilà "Irréversible", a movie with the ability to shock you three times: In the amazingly raw head splicing scene, in the equally raw anal rape scene - and in all the emptiness in between.
This is no more than an arthouse-shocker. All the messages Noé wants to bring across are lost on the exhausting way to the boring ending. Man is an animal? Well, yeah, how insightful. And it's not even brought across convincingly.
There would be so much to deconstruct in this nihilist film, but I won't waste too much energy. I too have to say, that there is a technical interest in the film, that I admired the rawness, that I was fascinated by the length of the scenes (for example the one-take-rape. Really tough) - but the showing off amounts to a big nothing. It's an empty film, it's arthouse exploitation. And a dishonest, actually uptight film for intellectual revenge freaks.
One might think that there's something interesting behind all the technical wizardry, behind the atrocities ... but no. There's not. Just watch closely and you might see it too.
Rating 1/10
PS: I was reminded of "Trouble Every Day", another film that tries to take a geekish shock-genre (Vampire-Horror with lots of blood) and give it an artsy fartsy touch. And it also fails miserably.
This is no more than an arthouse-shocker. All the messages Noé wants to bring across are lost on the exhausting way to the boring ending. Man is an animal? Well, yeah, how insightful. And it's not even brought across convincingly.
There would be so much to deconstruct in this nihilist film, but I won't waste too much energy. I too have to say, that there is a technical interest in the film, that I admired the rawness, that I was fascinated by the length of the scenes (for example the one-take-rape. Really tough) - but the showing off amounts to a big nothing. It's an empty film, it's arthouse exploitation. And a dishonest, actually uptight film for intellectual revenge freaks.
One might think that there's something interesting behind all the technical wizardry, behind the atrocities ... but no. There's not. Just watch closely and you might see it too.
Rating 1/10
PS: I was reminded of "Trouble Every Day", another film that tries to take a geekish shock-genre (Vampire-Horror with lots of blood) and give it an artsy fartsy touch. And it also fails miserably.