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Review

A happy, loving couple (real-life beaus Bellucci and Cassel) head out to a drunken party; afterwards, she is raped in an underpass and he seeks out vengeance. Button-pushing director Noe argues that "time destroys all things," but time also creates this film, as it's told in backwards order ala Memento; the reverse chronology transforms a sordid tale of revenge into a heartbreaking tragedy that ends with the hint of a beautiful future that will never come. In addition to Memento, there is a debt owed to the nouvelle vague, with its arrangement of 12 vignettes (vividly recalling Godard's My Life to Live) consisting of mostly long, improvised takes. The brilliance is in putting the most tender and funny moments last, with the opening segments (the last, chronologically) being unflinchingly brutal; there, the camera careens recklessly, only stopping for a vicious beating and the most horrifying and, arguably, realistic rape to ever be depicted on film. The innocent romance that closes the film is agonizingly tainted by the preceding violence, while the initial brutality is removed from reason, motivation and catharsis. The events of the film are irreversible, but so is the film's structure. It's as much a treatise on filmmaking and emotional manipulation as the senselessness of violence; whether it affects you intellectually or emotionally, whether you take it all in or have to turn away, Irreversible is completely unforgettable. (This is the unrated, uncensored version that was shown theatrically.)

 -- David Gorgos