Straw chiens

>> Gaspar Noé ups the rape ante with his Cannes shocker Irréversible

by MATTHEW HAYS

I confess to have become so jaded as to find the practice rather tedious. Every year or so, there’s a body count (usually at either Cannes or Sundance), in which film publicists boast about how many people require medical attention after or during a screening of a particularly outlandish film.

My inner cynic tells me they’re plants. Or that someone’s paid off the local emergency-unit director or fire marshal to make some remark about “never having seen anything like it in their life.” Next, I suspect, filmmakers will smuggle a corpse into their premiere and then claim that their film is so bloody shocking that a person actually died as a result of watching it.
But after sitting through Irréversible, Gaspar Noé’s second feature, I’m actually prone to believe the reports from last month’s Cannes event. There, where the film had its world premiere, 25 people reportedly required medical attention (oxygen) after fainting during the film’s opening 20 minutes (there were additional reports of vomiting). The film is a no-holds-barred, primal assault on the senses, a nauseating 90-odd minutes, told brazenly in reverse order, about rape, murder and revenge.

Backwards universe

From its opening, hallucinogenic credit sequence, it’s clear we’re not in a conventional film. Instead, Noé, whose previous feature Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone) freaked out audiences at the New Film Fest four years ago, presents a hellish Paris in which people survive amid dire inhumanity. What has shocked audiences—and thoroughly offended many in Europe’s critical community—are the unblinking portraits of violent crime. In particular, a scene depicting the anal rape of Monica Bellucci, an excruciating exercise that goes on for nine minutes in one take. As well, people were fainting in the film’s opening 20 minutes because of Noé’s frenetic, hand-held camerawork, which makes Blair Witch look downright static by comparison.

Noé flew into town early this week to plug the film. Not surprisingly, Irréversible has proven a massive hit in Europe. Also not surprisingly, the film’s distributors are opening it in Quebec first, knowing that our laissez-faire censor board will assure the film’s easy passage into cinemas. Not so in the rest of the continent, where Noé seems confident the film will run into censorship woes.

Mild-mannered moviemaker

Softspoken and polite, Noé looks nothing like one of the crooks populating his movies. And really, he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. “What are the best new drugs in town?” he asks me, appearing to think I’d be the type to know. I ask him why people are so affronted by the film.

“There is something about politeness,” he responds. “Especially in North America. I liked the idea of doing something without considering the reaction of the audience. But it’s the critics who’ve been most harsh. And there’s a big difference between the reactions of audiences and critics. The audience generally pays to see a movie and they know what they’re in for. Film critics are often sent by their office to see a movie they might hate. In France there were plenty of journalists I knew would hate it. But there they were. I didn’t invite them. It wasn’t a surprise when they hated it.”

Amazingly, Noé insists he wasn’t doing the film for mere shock value. It’s hard to believe, coming hot on the heels of such career-making rape and degradation shockers as Romance and Baise-moi. But Noé says his film is not mere contrived controversy. “No, no. To shock is easy. It’s more about seducing. You want to hypnotize with a movie. The hypnosis either takes you somewhere or it doesn’t. You’re in a trance or you’re not. If the hypnosis works well, the audience will get into your hypnosis or dream. If people don’t want to get into those kinds of trips, they shouldn’t go. If people don’t want a bad trip, they shouldn’t take LSD.”

Pushing Peckinpah

But in his next breath Noé acknowledges striving to set a new rape standard on screen. “I wanted to beat the sins of Deliverance and Straw Dogs. Did you know that Sam Peckinpah was supposed to direct Deliverance? They took the project out of his hands at the last minute and he was furious. So he said he was going to do the toughest rape scene ever, and he did it while Boorman was directing Deliverance. The only movie I ever walked out on because it was too tough for me was Straw Dogs. I think that rape is a fear that is much closer to everyday life than even death itself. Every single kid, male or female, has felt the fear of rape.”

So horrific is the anal rape scene (shot in a filthy subway passage) that many believe it to be real. Not so, reports the film’s writer and director. “There is a penis you see at the end, but it was added as a 3-D special effect in post-production. When we were editing it, the assistant editor said that it was a pity you don’t see the penis when he pulls back. So we added it in, just three seconds, a digitally created penis. We showed it to Monica, who was amused, and said it made it more real. The actor Jo Prestia, said it was fine as long as we made it big. The producers didn’t even know about it until the film screened at Cannes. They were a bit taken aback by this erect bloody penis up there.”

The film’s opening revenge sequence is shot entirely in a gay club, called “The Rectum.” But despite the depictions of ultra-slutty gay men, Noé says gay audiences have liked the film. “The reason I set it there is because I wanted the first half of the film to be totally male. When they go into the club to find the rapist, it could have been a prison or a military situation. But I liked the idea of a gay club—testicles against testicles, fighting for survival. For heterosexuals, the image of searching for a rapist in a gay club is more infernal, more hellish.”

Shocking, infernal, hellish, unendingly nasty—it’s all sounding more and more like my last vacation in Paris—but isn’t the rape thing getting a wee bit clichéd? “I think murder is more of a cliché. One out of every two movies has a murder in it. It’s not nearly that common in reality. People in America don’t show lots of things because they need an R rating. Life can be fun, but really, most of the time, life is heavy.

“There are many other taboos in movies. You never see people shitting in a movie, and people do that once a day.” :

Irréversible opens Friday, June 7