Monica Bellucci and the "irreversible" review of the crudest rape in film history
Gaspar Noé's film goes through a new montage but the sexual assault it includes (and the relationship between the film's protagonists) is still the subject of debate.
When Monica Bellucci and Vicent Cassel were the Brangelina of France (and the sexiest couple in the world), they both got involved together in Irreversible, a film that caused a real shock the first time it was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. The film, told in reverse chronological order, narrates the quest undertaken by two men, Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel), to avenge the brutal assault perpetrated against Alex (Monica Belluci), Marcus's girlfriend and Pierre's ex-girlfriend. It became a cult work due to its original temporal approach but above all because it includes a brutal rape scene of the character played by Bellucci.
Last weekend Irreversible was released again, this time at the Venice Film Festival, mounted in conventional chronological order. This new premiere was attended by Bellucci and Cassel, who are no longer a couple. Judging from the gestures during the presentation, they are not even friends.
Vicent Cassel attended the Venice festival with his new wife, model Tina Kunakey, 22, and with whom he just had a daughter. The Italian actress went alone but she spoke of the two daughters that she shares with the actor. They are the ones who, according to her, have made her rethink, so many years later, her participation in the film directed by Gaspar Noé: “I don't think I would do it again. I have to think about how this would affect them. "
How has the Irreversible violation earned its terrible reputation? First, because of its duration: filmed in a fixed shot it lasts for nine minutes. In addition to being incredibly graphic, it shows the assailant's erect member (which was added in post-production) and ends with a brutal beating of Alex, whose head is repeatedly slammed into the ground. The rapist, coincidentally, is a homosexual who frequents a place called Rectum. Second: 250 people left the projection room on the day of its premiere because they could not bear the violence it showed. A large majority of analysts (among them the renowned critic of El País, Ángel Fernández-Santos) found the portrayed violence unnecessary and immoral, which generated enormous curiosity about this work. And third: Roger Ebert, who was then the most important film critic in the world, nevertheless gave his blessing to the film. He was the one who said that the chronological order of the film was a find and that a different montage would radically alter its meaning. For him, the fact that violent assaults occur at the beginning of the film and then the whole plot unfolds in a flashback is what makes the film unable to be classified as pornographic. He is, in a way, the culprit that the film has become topical again almost 20 years later.
When Irreversible was released, its director, the Argentine Gaspar Noé, defended himself against the fiercest criticism by using a respectable argument: “People have gone crazy accusing me of misogyny and homophobia and that is stupid. That you have characters that reflect aspects of the human being does not mean that you agree with them. Paul Schrader said about Taxi Driver: "Just because I make a portrait of a criminal I am not one." That is to say: films represent fictions and what happens in them is not real. However, imaginary events that occur in fiction are judged by the value system of the real world.
The interpretation that was once made of the rape of Monica Bellucci allows us to see what the value system was with respect to sexual assaults in 2002.
Robert Ebert said that precisely the order of editing the film and the fact that we knew in advance that the protagonist was going to be raped made the scenes in which she dances at a party in a suggestive dress were seen "as a risk that should not be taken. Instead of making her look sexy and attractive, they make her look vulnerable and in danger. Although it is true that a woman has to dress as she wants, she is not always intelligent. In addition, the critic found that the character incarnated by Bellucci was especially interesting and commendable for the resistance he opposed to being attacked: “From the first moment we see that Alex is not only a sexual object or a romantic partner, but a very strong woman who He fights with his rapist until the last second. She that she uses every tool or tactic she has to try to stop him. That she loses but does not give up. This makes her sweetness and her warmth that much more obvious. This woman is not just a very sensual human being, as women in movies tend to be, but a fighter with a fierce instinct for survival. " That is to say: the character is respectable because she fights with her rapist, even when by resisting she is risking her own life.
The New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell, however, found an inexcusable flaw in the construction of the rape scene: "Alex escapes from a fight between her boyfriend and his friend and gets into a dark underground passage in Paris. A fatal error takes place here. Alex is wearing a dress so fine that it is more of a membrane than a piece of clothing. No woman would be so reckless to go into such a gloomy area that you can almost hear the fluttering of bats. Women are generally much more aware of the potential danger on the streets than men. It is at this point that Irreversible is an irresponsible film. Lord Noah is surreptitiously saying that she is causing them to rape her. "
That is to say: a woman who dresses lightly and goes into dark places is responsible to some extent for her own rape.
The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, on the other hand, clearly saw that this was a film in which the female point of view and her experience were not taken into account at all and that fiction is sometimes dangerously touched. with the real. “The only thing that interests her is male anger. Director Noah has an unmistakable male streak in everything he offers. He seems to be saying, “Who is the boss here? Hey? Who is the director?". Marcus and Pierre, the two male protagonists, are told by a local police officer that in the face of Alex's rape nothing can be done, that revenge is a human right and that what they can do is try to find the culprit. The film presents us with a world in which injustices are fixed by young people with shaved heads. You don't have to be a genius to understand what kind of ideology fosters that. "
All of these claims went unnoticed in the early 2000s. In 2019 and after the public debate that have generated trials such as La Manada, in which similar arguments have been heard against and in favor of the victim of a collective rape and in which the very concept "rape" has been under scrutinizing, they take on a new meaning.
That a woman is raped in a movie is nothing extraordinary. In the history of cinema, this type of aggression has served as anchors, metaphors, symbols, plot artifacts or catalysts for the narrative. Irreversible's rape scene has often been called one of the most disgusting in movie history, but there are not few to choose from. There are scenes of this kind in D.W. Griffith, in The Last Tango in Paris by Bernardo Bertolucci, in Kika and in Hable con ella by Pedro Almodóvar, in Ana y los lobos by Carlos Saura, in Basket Case by Frank Henelotte, in Mouchette and in Au Hazard Balthazar by Robert Bresson, in Blue Velvet and Lost Highway by David Lynch, in Boys Don't Cry by Kimberly Peirce, in Braveheart by Mel Gibson, in A Serbian Film by Srdjan Spasojevic, in A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, in Cry of a Prostitute by Andrea Bianchi , in Diary of a nymphomaniac by Christian Molina, in Dogville and Nymphomaniac by Lars Von Trier, in Ai no korida by Nagisa Oshima, in The Hangman Game by Manuel Gómez Pereira, in Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone, in Don't be afraid of Montxo Armendariz, in John McNaughton's Henry Portrait of a Murderer, in Tinto Brass's Caligula, Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, in Steve McQueen's 12 Years of Slavery, in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, in Vittorio de Sica's La ciociara , in Paria de Dee Res, in T I have acused of Jonathan Kaplan, in Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, in Larry Clark's Kids, in Patty Jenkins' Monster, in Roman Polanski's The Devil's Seed and Repulsion, in Spike Lee's Old Boy, in Clint Eastwood's The Pale Rider , in Precious by Lee Daniels, in Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, in Straw Dogs by Sam Pekinpah, in Saló by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in The Postman Always Calls Twice by Bob Rafelson, in El Cuervo by Álex Proyas, in La hija del general by Simon West, in El Renacido by Alejandro González Iñárritu, in Thirst for evil by Orson Welles, in Elle by Paul Verhoeven, in Ms. 45 by Abel Ferrara or in The hills have eyes by Alexandre Aja.
But the re-release and new editing of Irreversible comes at a time when audiences and critics have a new sensitivity to violence against women both on and off the screen. Not surprisingly, the president of the Venice Festival jury, Lucrecia Martel, said days ago that she did not feel comfortable with the presence of Roman Polanski at the festival. In 1977, Samantha Geimer accused the director of raping her, when she was 13 and he was 43. The filmmaker denied it, but later changed his version of her and pleaded guilty to "corruption of minors." When she found out that she would spend 50 years in jail for that statement, she fled the United States. She has never returned. Lucrecia Martel, activist and woman, has indicated that she has doubts about whether in this case it is correct to separate author and work, reality and fiction.
Monica Bellucci has spoken on numerous occasions about how she shot the scene for Irreversible, perhaps the most memorable moment of her career. His filming lasted two days and was repeated up to six times. She has also told that whoever was her partner at that time, she rejected the film at first: “She said that what Noah had in mind was too strong, too hard for both of them. We had both worked together before, but we had never gotten this far. " In the end, they both decided to get involved in the project despite everything.
In the new release of Irreversible, Bellucci's distant attitude towards Cassel has generated more stir than the film and critics have not yet ruled on whether or not the new montage significantly changes the meaning of the film. She, yes, has explained why she decided to get involved in the famous scene: “I made the decision to interpret that movie by instinct. And I do not regret it. It was the work of a great director, a film that is still debated.
