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Rating:
Formally audacious, stylistically sound, and stomach-sickeningly grisly, Gaspar Noé's stateside breakthrough is unarguably the work of a filmmaker with technique to spare. Whether or not this year's Gallic enfant terrible has anything to contribute to cinema other than skillful button-pushing, however, remains to be seen. Irreversible's facile tale of a once-idyllic couple caught in a torpor of rape, drugs, and retribution is loaded with easy ironies and horror-flick set pieces. Noé's technical gymnastics keep it undeniably compelling: Shot in fluid, color-saturated, whirling-dervish long takes, edited in reverse, and given a throbbing, hypnotic sound design from Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter, Irreversible's deft moves don't allow the viewer a second to ponder some of the script's more implausible, trumped-up conceits. An early-film cab-ride in which our anti-heroes assault a foreigner, for instance, serves as little more than an intentionally disorienting emotional red herring. Likewise, copious screen time is allotted to setting up the three lead characters' dynamic, which is of little use to Noé other than to upset audience expectations. And it's more than a little disingenuous that Monica Bellucci's much-discussed rape scene happens to be the only sequence shot with a steady camera. Noé purportedly relished the severe reactions provoked by screenings of Irreversible -- walk-outs, cat calls, and the like -- which would only make sense for a person whose ultimate goal is to create the cinematic equivalent of car-wreck gawking. Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

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