Irreversible

Irreversible is even more disturbing and depraved than I Stand Alone, and way more fucking genius. This thing is another one to put at the top of your "must NOT see" list thanks to an opening sequence of basement bondage club glimpses, hateful dialogues, and brutal face annihilation at the hands of a fire extinguisher's blunt end. This is some serious shit, shit that gets all the more serious a few sequences later when Gaspar Noe subjects us to ten nearly-impossible-to-endure minutes involving Monica Belluci that make me realize I misplaced my Straw Dogs reference in that last post. If you don't already know, you don't want to.

Irreversible is nothing if not shocking, disorienting, and...necessarily cinematic! I sincerely don't think I'll ever see anything as nauseatingly perfect as this picture's opening thirty minutes -- a thirty minutes filled with barely-contained judgment-lapsed blind rage, barely-lit sexual deviance, horrific violence, and swirling, swooping, upside-down, falling-down drunk camera work. Amazing, moreso considering the eventual development and the plain-stated poignancy of the relationship between characters Alex, Marcus, and also-ran former boyfriend Pierre. You'll ask yourself if you're even watching the same movie. Staggering.

And still not for you.