The rape of Mónica Bellucci that outraged the cinema 17 years ago provokes again in Venice
"Bodrio and reactionary", "pretentious and repulsive, an empty film with obscene and disgusting images" ... similar compliments were those that the Spanish press dedicated to Irreversible in its screening at the Cannes Film Festival 17 years ago. Gaspar Noé's film caused the biggest shock that has been experienced in the history of the contest. An estimated 200 people left the Palais after experiencing two of the most extreme moments in recent cinema.
The first, a death with a blown head with a fire extinguisher almost in the foreground. The second, and the one that caused the most dust, was an uncut, nine-minute rape, shot almost explicitly that turned the stomach of many and ended with the man smashing the head of his victim against the ground. The star of the time, Mónica Bellucci was the protagonist of that moment that marked a before and after in the festival controversies. Irreversible also received a loud ovation and quickly became a cult film, which was helped by Gaspar Noé's frenzied camera and his novel narrative bet, as the film progressed from back to front. That is, the first thing we saw was really the end of the story, while the end of the film was the beginning, with the happy couple and with the revelation that, on top of that, her character was pregnant.
One of the positive reviews, that made by the late Rogert Ebert, included the following appreciation: “The reverse chronology makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while the ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path scandalous and exploitative compensation ”. Almost 20 years have passed and Gaspar Noé has already accepted his condition as an enfent terrible with pleasure, so he seems to have reread the criticisms and to have bet with his friends that in a triple corkscrew he was going to perform that exercise, place the pieces of his puzzle in chronological order to provoke different reactions, although surely just as polarized and scandalized by their violation on a fixed plane.
The experiment is called Irreversible, Straight cut, and it has been screened in a special session at the Venice Film Festival, which seems this year subscribed to controversy. In an almost morbid planning, the re-release of the film by Gaspar Noé has been placed just one day before the arrival of the new film by Roman Polanski, on which a conviction for a rape in 1977 weighs and that he will not be able to step on the Lido since it would be immediately arrested and extradited to the US.
In these 17 years the world has changed, and the awareness regarding the representation of women and the treatment of them in the cinema is completely different. At that time, Polanski was shooting without a problem and even won an Oscar for The Pianist, but now even the president of the jury, Lucrecia Martel, has declared that she does not feel comfortable with him, and that although she thinks it is positive that her film is in competition, he will not go to the gala to applaud him because he has “a responsibility with many women”.
Who has not changed in this time seems to be Noah, who during the presentation of his last (and of course, provocative) film, Climax, assured in an interview in The independant that "nowadays, even the representation of female nudity or male has been demonized. In many ways, Western societies go back to the 19th century or to more repressive cultures with religious origins "and he added that" the representation of sex is becoming problematic. "
The director has always defended his formal commitment to the film, and after the scandal at Cannes he claimed that if a rape scene was not unpleasant it did not have the destabilizing and repulsive effect that such an act should have. "Since the subject of the film was rape, it had to be as powerful as possible, be disgusting enough, be useful. If you make a movie with rape and don't show it, you hide the important thing ... the point is that if you show it in an unpleasant way, you help people avoid those kinds of situations. Like in A Clockwork Orange, when you show Malcolm McDowell scary images to prevent him from doing that kind of thing, it helps if it shows up. " remarked in The Guardian then.
In Venice it will be demonstrated if the film has lost its effect, if Noah is still in his thirteen, and if another 200 people flee the room when they see Irreversible, although this time placed in chronological order and assimilating the codes of one more revenge story.
