The violation of Mónica Bellucci that outraged the cinema 17 years ago provokes again in Venice
Almost 20 years ago, more than 200 people fled the Cannes screening of 'Irreversible' because of the harshness of this scene.
“Bodrio and reactionary”, “pretentious and repulsive, an empty film with obscene and disgusting images”… similar compliments were paid to Irreversible by the Spanish press at its screening at the Cannes Film Festival 17 years ago. Gaspar Noé's film caused the biggest scare that has been experienced in the history of the event. It is estimated that some 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 a nine-minute r*pe without cuts, shot in an almost explicit way that turned the stomach of many and ended with the man crushing his victim's head on the ground. The star of the time, Mónica Bellucci was the protagonist of that moment that marked a before and after in the controversial festivals. Irreversible also received a standing ovation and quickly became a cult film, aided by Gaspar Noé's frenetic camera and his novel narrative approach, as the film moved from back to front. In other words, 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 the revelation that, on top of that, her character was pregnant.
One of the positive reviews, by the late Rogert Ebert, included the following appreciation: “The reverse chronology makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against r*pe and violence, while the ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path. of scandalous and exploitative compensation”. Almost 20 years have passed and Gaspar Noé has already gladly accepted his condition as enfent terrible, so he seems to have reread the criticisms and to have bet with his friends that in a triple corkscrew he would 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 in a fixed shot.
The experiment is called Irreversible, Straight cut, and it has been screened in a special session at the Venice Film Festival, which seems to have become controversial this year. In an almost morbid planning, the re-release of Gaspar Noé's film has been placed just one day before the arrival of the new film by Roman Polanski, on which a conviction for a r*pe in 1977 weighs and which will not be able to set foot 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 their treatment in the cinema is completely different. At that time Polanski was filming without any 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 believes that 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".
The one who has not changed in this time seems to be Noé, who during the presentation of his latest (and of course, provocative) film, Clímax, assured in an interview in The independant that "today, even the representation of female nudity or masculine 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 s*x 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 r*pe scene was not unpleasant, it did not have the destabilizing and repulsive effect that such an act should have. "Because the subject of the film was r*pe, it had to be as powerful as possible, be unpleasant enough, be useful. If you make a film with a r*pe and you don't show it, you hide the important thing... the point is that if you show it in a nasty way, you help people avoid those kinds of situations. Like in A Clockwork Orange, when Malcolm McDowell is shown horror footage to keep him from doing those kinds of things, it helps to show it," remarked in The Guardian then.
In Venice it will be shown if the film has lost its effect, if Noé 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.
