Irreversible

Gaspar Noé runs the events backwards: the film opens with what happens last, the credits scroll in reverse and some letters are flipped. The cast played the scenes in order in the summer of 2001; the inversion happened in the edit. The shooting script was three pages; none of the twelve scenes had written dialogue and most was improvised. Noé shot much of it himself on Super 16, blown up to 35 mm. The rape scene at the centre holds 9 minutes in one take from a fixed camera; six takes were shot over two days and Monica Bellucci set its length. Nothing cuts away. Thomas Bangalter laid a 27 hertz tone under the first stretch. You cannot hear it but it makes you shake, and Noé says it works on a cinema sound system, not headphones, so home viewing drops part of the design. At the 2002 Cannes screening fire wardens gave oxygen to twenty people who fainted; the film took the Bronze Horse at Stockholm that year. Noé showed a chronological version, Irréversible: Straight Cut, at Venice in 2019. A good fit if you accept a film that makes structure the assault and can watch where the 27 hertz hum is audible. Not for anyone waiting for an edit to break the 9 minute take: it never comes.