Irreversible

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

After a while, a didactic overdeliberateness seeps into Noé's design, but there's no doubt that he's a new kind of dark film wizard: a poet of apocalyptic shock.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The moral of Irreversible -- time destroys everything -- isn't nearly as profound as writer-director Gaspar Noé seems to think it is, which is why some critics have already dismissed the movie as the facile, misogynistic posturings of a provocateur.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Whatever else it may be, Irreversible is disturbingly unforgettable. It is impossible to have a blasé reaction to a film this visceral. Indifference is not an option.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It would be easy and convenient to dismiss Irreversible as blatant sensationalism. But Noe's bruising film is too artfully crafted to write off as exploitation.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

A demanding but rewarding emotional odyssey in a challenging visual package.

LA Weekly John Powers

Noé calls Irreversible his "Eyes Wide Shut," though it's really more like "A Clockwork Orange."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

"Time destroys all," claims the film, but the monstrous capabilities of human evil is the real culprit here, and Noe is determined to prove that the real evil that men do is not fodder for cinematic spectacle and cinematic entertainment.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Noe's despairing view of human nature is as thoughtful as it is grim, limning the most appalling aspects of earthly experience in terms recalling Dante and Bosh, among other apocalyptic artists.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

An integrated work whose form clearly mirrors its content. Often, looking into that mirror is dreadful; but, often enough, it's also dreadfully revealing.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Made with disarming craft and cunning. Intermixed in the memories it leaves of horror and disgust are glimpses of impressive technique and savvy psychological insight.

Film Threat Dan Wible

Let me set the record straight: Gaspar Noé is the real deal. Is he excessive? Yes. Manipulative? Sure. Pretentious? Absolutely. But, he’s also one of the most exciting filmmakers on the planet.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Noé shoots his sequences in long, unbroken takes, and the unblinking horror that results is, I think, the opposite of exploitation. There has been so much lurid bloodletting in the movies that you might think nothing could faze us anymore. Think again.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

There are strong ideas at play in Noé's undeniably audacious and technically stunning second feature, which goes as far as any film can in revealing the breakdown of order and the deterioration of the rational mind.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Noé isn't a kid (he'll turn 40 this year) but he's still young as a filmmaker; he may yet learn to control his desire to sear the audience's eyes out with a red-hot poker before he's even started telling a story.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Viewers should be warned that Irréversible means what it says: Your experience of this movie can not be forgotten once the die is cast.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Once you're past THOSE scenes, and come to know the context and characters involved, you'll find something both deeply humanist and emotionally complex.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

About halfway through Irreversible comes the longest sustained act of violence I've seen onscreen.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

What's wrong is the decision to let all the actors improvise their lines...At the end, Irreversible looks less like captured or even distorted life than an acting class.

Film Threat Tim Merrill

Anyone with a weak heart or a queasy stomach should stay away. In fact, most everyone everywhere should stay away. But if you still want to see Irreversible, be prepared to see images that will upset and disturb you for a long, long time. Be prepared to be shaken to the very core.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Whether you take the film as a deliberately vile act of filmmaking that unpacks rape-revenge scenarios while making a point about male desire, or simply as a deliberately vile piece of filmmaking, one thing is certain: It's about as close to a physical assault on viewers as movies get.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

What we have here is a genuine outlaw work of art.

USA Today Mike Clark

To cut Noe a break, it does become evident that he has a viable narrative concept. Told backward, á la "Memento."

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Even if you closed your eyes -- a tempting option -- you would still know that you were in the hollering presence of pain. The story is undiluted dread. [10 March 2003, p. 94]

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Noé, with his Nietzsche-for-knuckleheads nihilism and extreme-cinema ambitions, clearly fancies himself a visionary, but mounting a camera on a roller coaster or putting a story into rewind doesn't make a film formally adventurous or interesting. Conceiving of a gay club as an antechamber to the inferno and sexualizing a woman's rape, however, do make it titillating.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

To get to the beginning, one must first get through the end, which is almost literally unendurable.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Stupid, vicious, and pretentious, though you may find it worth checking out if you want to experiment with your own nervous system.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Though Mr. Noé displays prodigious filmmaking technique, his punk-operatic meditation on life, love, anger and -- most important -- guilt is superficially inventive, but singularly adolescent.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Noe's summation is an ideological sucker-punch from a filmmaker who gets off on abusive relationships. He may as well have thrown a big ''whatever'' up on the screen.

Newsweek David Ansen

Irreversible takes an adolescent pride in its own ugliness. “I Stand Alone" told me something about the world; this one tells me more than I want to know about the calculating mind of its maker.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Fails because of its gratuitous rape and violence and also because of its pretentious and intellectually one-dimensional grounds, which make the violence at the end feel even worse.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

What isn't hard to say is that Noé really isn't a very talented filmmaker.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Maybe, you think, there is something daring and brilliant going on here: an excursion into the darkest territories of the human soul. But no. In the end -- or the beginning -- there is no point to all this. Or at least not a point worth making, and making us watch.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Irreversible, though, is not a Kubrickian head trip. All Noe has come up with is a turn-on for sadists.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Noe isn't a graceful filmmaker. He wants to traumatize his audience, barnstorm us, make us pay in anxiety and sweat and scorched nerves for the ugly truths he wants us to swallow.

Slate David Edelstein

The 12 scenes of Irreversible--each shot in a single, semi-improvised take--constitute something of a tour de force. But so would being dragged through the streets by a wire noose.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

From the end to the beginning--or is it from the inadvertently ridiculous to the would-be sublime?--Noé's stunt is an exploitation movie with a gimmick, not to mention a vacuous philosophy.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Truthfully, it's all incredibly boring. Noé tosses in some dime-store existentialism ("Time destroys everything"), but this is a movie with not a whole lot on its mind except rank exploitation.