This movie reminded me most of Lilya 4-ever. It’s a movie whose power I can’t possibly deny, but it’d take a lot for me to watch it again. In Irreversible’s case, however, the problem is that a second viewing might be necessary to fully “get” it.

It’s structured like Memento, the story told backwards scene by scene. This was such a unique and successful gimmick for Memento that it almost seems wrong for any other movie to have a go, but even though the technique here is identical, its effect on the viewer is completely different.

This isn’t recommended to the even mildly weak-stomached, but you’ll figure that out within about the first 10 minutes (a scene that’s almost unwatchable for its shock impact on a first viewing, but, I’m told, even more unbearable the second time around for reasons I won’t reveal here).

There are places in the movie that made me feel particularly cold towards the movie – it does delve into places similar to the movie Audition I watched a while ago, a movie I found just as repellent but far less powerful, it seemed only out to shock, while Irreversible has a definite agenda (or, of course, it’s just that I can see the agenda here while I couldn’t see it in Audition... then there’s my bias towards the French…)

I can’t say I enjoyed the movie – who could? But I thought its style (even without the backwards narrative) was really unique and the acting all round is terrific… even terrifying…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2004 at 10:56 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.