Gaspar Noé's film undergoes a new montage but the s-xual assault it includes (and the relationship between the film's protagonists) is still the subject of debate.
When Monica Bellucci and Vicent Cassel were France's Brangelina (and the s-xiest couple in the world), they both got involved together in Irreversible, a film that caused a real stir when it was first screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. The film, told in reverse chronological order, narrates the search undertaken by two men, Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel), to avenge the brutal attack perpetrated against Alex (Monica Belluci), Marcus's girlfriend and Pierre's ex-girlfriend. It became a cult work for its original temporal approach but above all because it includes a brutal scene of r-pe of the character played by Bellucci.
Last weekend Irreversible premiered 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 by the gestures during the introduction, they are not even friends.
Vicent Cassel attended the Venice festival with his new wife, the model Tina Kunakey, 22, and with whom he has just had a girl. The Italian actress went alone but she talked about the two daughters she shares with the actor. They are the ones who, according to her, have made her reconsider, so many years later, her participation in the film directed by Gaspar Noé: “I don't think she would do it again. I have to think about how this would affect them.”
How has the violation of Irreversible earned its terrible reputation? First, because of its duration: filmed in a fixed shot, it lasts nine minutes. As well as 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 slammed into the ground over and over again. The rapist, coincidentally, is a homos-xual who frequents a place called Rectum. Second: 250 people left the screening room on the day of its premiere because they couldn't stand the violence it showed. A large majority of analysts (among them the renowned critic of El País, Ángel Fernández-Santos) found the violence portrayed unnecessary and immoral, which generated enormous curiosity around this work. And third: the one who was then the most important film critic in the world, Roger Ebert, nevertheless gave the film his blessing. 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 the violent attacks occur at the beginning of the film and then the entire plot unfolds in a flashback is what makes the film not classifiable as pornographic. He is, in a way, to blame for the fact 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 wielding a respectable argument: “People have gone crazy accusing me of misogyny and homophobia and that's stupid. Just because you have characters that reflect aspects of being human doesn't mean 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: the films represent fictions and what happens in them is not real. However, the imaginary events that occur in fiction are judged with the value system of the real world.
The interpretation that was once made of the r-pe of Monica Bellucci allows us to see what the value system was regarding s-xual assault in 2002.
Robert Ebert said that precisely the order of the film's editing and the fact that we knew in advance that the protagonist was going to be r-ped made the scenes in which she dances at a party wearing a suggestive dress "seen as a risk that should not be taken. Instead of making her look s-xy and attractive, they make her look vulnerable and in danger. Although it is true that a woman has to dress as she pleases, she is not always intelligent». In addition, the critic found that the character played by Bellucci was especially interesting and praiseworthy for the resistance she put up against being attacked: “From the first moment we see that Alex is not just a s-xual object or a romantic partner, but a very strong woman who fight with her rapist until the last second. She that she uses every tool or tactic at her disposal to try and stop him. That she loses but does not give up. This makes her sweetness and warmth 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 survival instinct.” That is to say: the character is respectable because she fights with her rapist, even when by resisting she is risking her own life.
New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell, however, found an unforgivable flaw in the construction of the r-pe scene: "Alex escapes a fight between her boyfriend and his friend and gets into a dark underground passageway in Paris. A fatal error takes place here. Alex wears a dress so thin that it is more a membrane than a piece of clothing. No woman would be so reckless as to walk into an area so murky that you can almost hear the bats flapping their wings. 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. Mr. Noah is surreptitiously saying that she is causing her to be r-ped."
That is to say: a woman who dresses lightly and goes into dark places is to some extent responsible for her own r-pe.
The critic of The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, on the contrary, clearly saw that it was a film in which the female point of view and her experience were not taken into account at all and that, sometimes, the fiction is dangerously touched with the real “The only thing that interests him is male anger. The Noé director has an unmistakable macho streak in everything he offers. He seems to be saying, “Who's the boss here? Hey? Who is the director?". Marcus and Pierre, the two male protagonists, are told by a local policeman that nothing can be done about Alex's r-pe, 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 shaven heads. You don't have to be a genius to understand what kind of ideology that fosters."
All these claims passed unnoticed in the early 2000s. In 2019 and after the public debate generated by trials such as that of La Manada, in which similar arguments have been heard against and in favor of the victim of a gang r-pe and in which the very concept of "r-pe" has been under scrutiny, they take on a new meaning.
That a woman is r-ped in a movie is nothing extraordinary. In the history of cinema, this type of aggression has served as anchors, metaphors, symbols, plot artifacts or narrative catalysts. Irreversible's r-pe scene has often been called one of the nastiest in movie history, but there are plenty to choose from. There are scenes of this kind in The Guilt of Others by D.W. Griffith, in Last Tango in Paris by Bernardo Bertolucci, in Kika and Talk to her by Pedro Almodóvar, in Ana and the Wolves 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 Armendáriz, in Henry Portrait of a Murderer by John McNaughton, in Caligula by Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, in 12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen, in Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg, in La ciociara by Vittorio de Sica , at Dee Res Pariah, at T I have accused Jonathan Kaplan, in Cannibal Holocaust by Ruggero Deodato, in Kids by Larry Clark, in Monster by Patty Jenkins, in The Baby of the Devil and Repulsion by Roman Polanski, in Old Boy by Spike Lee, in The Pale Rider by Clint Eastwood , 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 Rings Twice by Bob Rafelson, in The Raven by Álex Proyas, in La hija del General by Simon West, in The Revenant 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 revival and new production of Irreversible comes at a time when the public and the critics have a new sensitivity regarding the violence exerted on women both on and off the screen. Not in vain, the president of the jury of the Venice Festival, 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 years old and he was 43. The filmmaker denied it, but later changed her version 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 in Irreversible, perhaps the most memorable moment of her career. His filming lasted for two days and was repeated up to six times. She has also said that the one who was her partner at the time, she rejected the film at first: “She said that what Noé had in mind was too strong, too hard for both of them. The two of us had worked together before, but we'd never gotten this far." In the end, they both decided to get involved in the project regardless.
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 play that movie instinctively. And I don't regret it. It was the work of a great director, a film that is still being discussed."
