Movie Review Irreversible

Irreversible (2002) 

Directed Gaspar Noe 

Written by Gaspar Noe 

Starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassell 

Release Date May 22nd, 2002 

Published February 7th, 2023. 

Irreversible begins with the end credits moving backwards and immediately sets you into the disorientation you are going to experience as the story unfolds backwards. It's not just the credits moving backwards, or the words of the credits being inverted, it's Gaspar Noe's camera which moves not in the sense of being a fly on the wall but rather like a fly that never stops moving, looping, flying here and there up and down and upside down. It's legitimately headache inducing. It's intended to be. 

This camera/fly will lead us back in time, back inside a nightclub called Rectum where a murder has just occurred. We've just seen to men removed from the club to an ambulance and accompanied by Police. We are about to learn why they are surrounded by cops as the two have them have just brutally beaten a man to death so violently that his head is basically gone. It's not just the camera though that is leaving us achy and disjointed, the soundtrack is a swirling vortex of sound rising and falling, loud and then quiet. It's a disquieting, swirling and painful hum. 

I will give the soundtrack credit, as hard as it is to listen to, it causes the kind of tense anxiety that our main character, Vincent Cassell's Marcus, is feeling as he shoves his way through this sex club searching for the man who sexually assaulted and nearly murders Marcus' girlfriend, Alex (Monica Bellucci). Marcus is rage personified and the red lighting of the club seems to match the red-hot intensity of his burning, violent anger. Noe peppers the scene with scenes of hardcore gay sex that is nearly as disturbing as the violence that the scene is building to. 

Sex and violence in the world of Gaspar Noe go hand in hand. A man who claims to know where Tenia, the man Marcus is looking for, can be found begs Marcus to Fist him in the ass, something that may in fact be pleasurable but carries with it a sense of something violent in the word fist, a part of the body far more often associated with punching, pounding or the breaking of facial bones. As the man points in the direction of someone who may be Tenia, more sexual violence is nearly enacted as Marcus finds himself in the position of being forcefully taken by this supposed Tenia. 

That's when the murder occurs. Pierre (Albert Dupontel), Marcus's friend, and a man who also once loved Alex, steps in to rescue his friend. He does so by bashing the supposed Tenia with a fire extinguisher. Here, again, Noe's camera is as much an accomplice to the action as it is capturing the image. The movement of Noe's camera as Pierre proceeds to finish the job of bashing in this man's skull is stomach churning, nearly as much the sick, twisted, gross mess that is the man's face as Pierre's assault increases in violence. 

What has led to this violence we will soon find. Again, Irreversible unfolds from the end to the beginning. We follow Marcus and Pierre through Marcus' single minded pursuit of Tenia, his intent is revenge and when we see what he is intending to avenge, we come to understand his feelings. Marcus' beloved, Alex (Monica Bellucci) is in a coma after having been sexually assaulted in a scene that has become infamous for its dedication to the true horror of rape. 

I am going to use the word rape because that visceral description is more truthful. Calling this sexual assault is far too sanitary for what happens to Alex. Alex is raped. This man, Tenia, who we find is not the man that we've just seen Marcus and Pierre beat to death, is a vile, rotten, bit of scum. We see him first assaulting another woman in this underground tunnel. When Alex objects, Tenia turns to her and enacts a scene of gut wrenching, horrific sexual violence. 

Whether you find this depiction of rape offensive or exploitative is purely subjective. I am not here to argue with you about that. If you are offended by this scene or find it to be exploitative of the crime of rape, I understand and respect your feelings. I can also identify with you in that, when I saw Irreversible following its controversial debut at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, which made headlines for audiences walking out in droves during this scene, I also found the scene deeply offensive. I thought Gaspar Noe was a sick individual for committing such degradation to film. 

20 plus years later, I've grown up a bit. I'm less of a hothead, less prone to a hot take. Watching Irreversible today, I found the scene horrifying but understandably so. Noe wants you, the audience, to confront fully what happened to Alex. The scene is unflinching and Noe's unmoving, unblinking camera, fully static for the first time in the film, on the ground at the same level as Belluci's Alex, forces us to identify with Alex, to feel her horror. 

Noe has rightly pointed out that having the camera moving in this scene places you not in Alex's position but rather in the position of the man assaulting her. It changes the dynamic of the scene, it becomes more artificial and exploitative, as if the camera were searching for bits to show you that you could see if you were there looking around at what was happening. Holding the camera at floor level, keeping us fully in Alex's space, puts us fully at the mercy of the situation. 

Find my full length essay at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Derailed

Derailed (2005) 

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom 

Written by Stuart Beattie 

Starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassell, Melissa George, Xzibit 

Release Date November 11th, 2005

Published November 11th, 2005 

When Jennifer Aniston was on "Friends" she was undeniably a star. When she co-starred with Jim Carrey in her first blockbuster movie role in Bruce Almighty, again she looked like a star. Unfortunately, outside her hit TV show and without Jim Carrey to fall back on Jennifer Aniston looks anything but a star in the dreadful thriller Derailed, a misguided attempt to recast Jennifer Aniston as a femme fatale.

Alongside an equally miscast Clive Owen, Aniston struggles with a ridiculous plot, poor direction and a thriller concept that is entirely devoid of thrills.

Though Jennifer Aniston is clearly the draw of Derailed, Clive Owen is the star of the film as Charles, a bored husband and father who jumps at the chance to meet a sexy stranger on a train. That sexy stranger is Lucinda (Aniston), a banker, also married with a child but unhappily married as she is rather quick to confess. The two share a few moments on the train, then lunch the following day, drinks the next night and finally a seedy hotel.

It is in the hotel that a minor fling becomes a huge mess. Just as Charles and Lucinda are getting intimate, the door bursts open and in comes Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a petty thief who they assume just wants a few bucks. If only that was all he wanted.  Unfortunately, before he leaves he beats Charles severely and then rapes Lucinda.

Here is where the films logic becomes derailed, pun intended. So should Charles and Lucinda call the police and report what happened? If they do their spouses will find out what happened and they will lose everything. So it's understandable then that they just let it be. Charles tells his wife Deanna (Melissa George) that he was mugged.  She thankfully does not ask about going to the police, and both Charles and Lucinda go their separate ways.

Not long after, however, Charles gets a call from Laroche asking for twenty grand or else he will tell his wife Deanna that he cheated. Charles again has ample opportunity to come clean to his wife and call the cops but because the plot requires his stupidity, he pays the money. This, despite the fact that he needs the cash to pay for the care of his sick daughter Amy (Addison Timlin), who needs constant care for diabetes.

The money puts off Laroche only temporarily as he once again comes calling, even showing up at Charles' house, asking this time for one hundred grand. Can you guess that Charles still is not smart enough to call the cops? Of course he isn't, but to his luck the screenplay by Stuart Beattie provides a street smart African American ex-con named Winston (rapper RZA pronounced "riza") as a mail room worker at Charles office who offers to help him out for only ten grand.

By this point in the film I would not have cared if Charles enlisted the help of the entire Wu Tang Clan to get the bad guys off his back. Derailed is such a clueless mess of a movie that watching it is more frustrating than a game of Sudoku blindfolded. The lapses of logic are staggeringly stupid and though it's become old hat to call bad thrillers predictable I have to break out that old chestnut as well. Ads for the film ask that we don't give away the big twist and I won't, watch two minutes of the movie and you will guess the twist on your own.

Derailed has one of those idiotic plots that could be cleared up with one smart action by the main character or attention to one minor detail by one of the supporting characters. The players in Derailed must remain willfully ignorant in order for this plot to work and that is endlessly frustrating for the attentive movie goer.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about Derailed is the performance of Clive Owen. Sleepwalking his way through this ridiculous role, Owen's Charlie is passive even when threatened repeatedly and entirely manipulated by the plot at every turn. What may I ask was supposed to make Charlie an interesting thriller hero? He cheats on his wife while she is at home taking care of their sick daughter. He blows the savings meant to save his daughter's life to cover up his affair and when his family is threatened directly by the bad guys he does nothing but accept his third ass whipping in the movie. I hated Charlie as much as I hated the lowlife bad guys who took his money.

I feel very bad for Jennifer Aniston. After losing her husband Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie and watching those two strike box office gold with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she finds her first gig since the breakup to be arguably the worst performance of her career. Worse even than that Leprechaun sequel she was in before "Friends". It's not entirely her fault.  I'm sure someone convinced her to forego her good judgement and believe that this insipid plot could actually work if they sexed it up a bit, but even the sex in Derailed is a letdown.

Clive Owen continues a baffling string of monotone dull performances. Someone in Hollywood desperately wants Clive Owen to be a big star but his performances in Beyond Borders, King Arthur and now Derailed show an actor bored with unchallenging material and allowing that boredom to seep into his performance. When challenged in movies like his breakthrough performance in Croupier, in the thriller I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and the scathing relationship drama Closer, Owen shows he has real acting chops. Stop trying to force Clive Owen to be a star, he clearly doesn't want it.

Derailed is an abysmal movie, a worst of the year list kind of movie. A forgettable, stupid unrelentingly bad B-movie dressed up with A-list actors slumming in idiot parts.

Movie Review: Black Swan

Black Swan (2010)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Mark Heyman

Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassell, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Release Date December 3rd, 2010

Published December 2nd, 2010  

Cause this is f.....d up, f....d up.." Thom Yorke "Black Swan" The Eraser 2006.

Thom Yorke unknowingly encapsulated Darren Aronofsky's “Black Swan” in his song Black Swan back in 2006. Indeed, “Black Swan” the movie is 'F....d up.' The story of a prima ballerina in New York City who gets her big break as the lead in the legendary "Swan Lake."

“Black Swan” is extreme melodrama of a kind that only Darren Aronofsky can create and features a second to none, tour de force performance from Natalie Portman that bears comparison with De Niro's method take on Jake Lamotta in “Raging Bull.”

In “Black Swan” Natalie Portman stars as Nina Sayers an overgrown child with dreams of being the featured performer at the New York City Ballet. Living at home with her codependent mom (Barbara Hershey) whose own failure to rise beyond the corps in the same company years earlier has driven much of Nina's own career. If having her mother trying to live vicariously through her isn't troubling enough, Nina is also a cutter who has apparently started cutting again as we join the story; her mother discovers a scratch on Nina's back as she dresses her.

Arriving at Lincoln Center for the beginning of rehearsals for a new season Nina finds that the company's lead ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder) is being forced out and that Thomas (Vincent Cassell) will mount a newly re-imagined version of Swan Lake with a new lead dancer. Complicating matters for Nina is the arrival of a new, free spirited dancer from the west coast, Lily (Mila Kunis), who Thomas has apparently recruited specifically to join this production.

The plot unfolds as one might expect as Nina finds herself in competition with Lily and constantly concerned that the newcomer is attempting to undermine her. What is not predictable is the ways in which director Darren Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique turn up the heat on these proceedings and juice “Black Swan” from slight, goofy melodrama into an over the top camp melodrama that combines exploitation films with high minded art films like we've never seen before.

Natalie Portman spent months training to become a ballet professional losing more than 25 pounds from her already slight frame and allegedly breaking both ribs and toes in the process. I will put what Ms. Portman did up against the physical commitment of any actor in just about any role; her commitment here is remarkable and the performance is devastating as a result.

In previous roles Ms. Portman has played vulnerable but in “Black Swan” she takes on a frightful level of frailty. Looking as if a stiff breeze could take her away and speaking with the quivering voice of a small child, Ms. Portman portrays a fragility that is both physical and emotional. As Nina descends the depths of “Black Swan” Ms. Portman's delicate performance acquires bizarre new levels and by the end you are so fascinated by her that “Black Swan's” many artistic flights slip past almost unnoticed.

The extraordinary look of “Black Swan” is achieved with a combination of hand held digital and an extraordinarily small 16 millimeter film camera with minimal movie lighting that gives an intimate, almost claustrophobic effect in scenes set in Nina’s tiny apartment and an elegant yet macabre look during the lavishly produced ballet sequences. The camera work is so fluid and the production design so terrific that it may go unnoticed by many.

Not surprisingly, the scenes getting the most attention are the sex scenes. Long time friends Portman and Kunis engage is a rigorous girl on girl scene that is more in the imagination of the viewer than you may have been lead to believe. In an exceptional series of scenes Matthew Cassell's imperious leader instructs Nina to touch herself in order to get in touch with the seductive character of the Black Swan leading to a scene that begins erotic and grows disturbingly, darkly, comic.

Darren Aronofsky is part of that rare breed of directors with nerves of steel who rarely question their vision even if that vision is wildly out of the norm. Few other filmmakers would have the guts to try what Aronofsky somehow pulls off in “Black Swan,” a blithely over the top melodrama that haughtily demands to be taken seriously. Laugh if you like, Aronofsky and “Black Swan” stand proudly and in the ungodly brilliant performance of Natalie Portman indeed you have something that cannot easily be dismissed.

“Black Swan” is a stunner; a film of extravagant oddity and highly charged passion. A film with a deeply melodramatic heart and yet high minded pretensions. Darren Aronofsky and company walk a daring high wire act to keep all of these elements in play, at odds and ever moving toward a crashing, spectacular crescendo. This is a film that demands and commands your attention.