So, John Waters got his own television show: “John Waters Presents: Movies That Will Corrupt You”. The series, which screened on gay cable network Here a few years ago, featured 13 hand-picked films introduced by the master of midnight cinema himself.
I was humbled when my first film “Quiet Night In” was compared to John Waters by a Toronto festival in 2005. I’m a casual fan of his demented earlier work as well as the subtle (by comparison) later stuff (NB: What was that ‘Hairspray’ remake all about?)
Needless to say when I stumbled across this show while trawling the web for mindless diversion I was fascinated to see which films would make Waters’ list. We shouldn’t be surprised that his choices are all rather uncompromising works, but none more so than French shocker “Irreversible”, which was used to close the series.
I first reviewed “Irreversible” when it came to New Zealand for a film festival in 2003. I was suitably disgusted, and penned 800 words worth of indignation for GayNZ.com which were later used by a fundamentalist morals group in their attempts to have the film banned in New Zealand’s high court.
Unfortunately (for them) it didn’t work, and I revisited my own thoughts on the film during the controversy in New Zealand over whether “Irreversible” would ever see a theatrical release. Here’s an excerpt from my second review:
The story is a simple one, told over the course of a single day. A woman is raped and beaten by a stranger after leaving a party at which she has been neglected by her skirt-crazy, oversexed boyfriend. When he sees his girlfriend being loaded into an ambulance, he sets out for revenge, accompanied by the woman’s more cultured and sensitive ex who is trying to calm him down.
After trawling through the red-light districts of Paris interrogating tranny prostitutes, they eventually find the man who did it in a gay sex club (or do they?) and he is murdered, but not by the out-of-control boyfriend – by the cultured, sensitive ex who has been labelled weak and effeminate by the boyfriend in earlier scenes. The context of all these events only become clear by degrees, as the film unfolds in reverse, beginning with the killing, working backwards to the rape, the party, and finally to the couple at home, blissfully unaware of the irreversible events that are to come.
Along the way, the fragility of masculine identity will be examined in minute observational and sociological detail; how some men over-compensate for their own sexual confusion by verbal (and sometimes physical) gay-bashing, how men of all persuasions and personality types can treat women as possessions and sexual objects, the pressure that more sensitive men have to “butch up” so they’re not considered fags, and the nature of men – both straight and gay – as inherently sexual beings.
This film will make you think. It will upset you. It is most definitely not recommended for anyone still in the process of coming out or in any doubt about the worthiness of their sexual identity. But for those who feel ready for it, it’s an inexplicably profound experience of horror and truth.
John Waters describes all the films in his “Corrupt” series as date movies, although he admits that “Irreversible” probably wouldn’t be suitable for a first date:
I guess if I were trying to seduce a date, the movies in the series would be the movies I would show in that order. Showing movies is a good date. If on the first date they hated “Freeway” I’d be turned off. They should be turned off. But I definitely wouldn’t show “Irreversible” on the first date, unless he was a film buff.
I can’t ever imagine “Irreversible” being a date movie, and I have to wonder what director Gaspar Noe would think of this description. Being as hardcore as he is, he’d probably either find it funny or agree.
I’m not as hardcore as Gaspar, but I was inspired by some of his ‘bathed in red’ visuals:
There, the similarity ends. I’m not sure if I’d be able to sleep too easy at night knowing I’d fathered a film like “Irreversible”.
3 Comments
October 2, 2008 at 9:50 am
Hi, Christopher.
Can I ask what made you change your mind about Irreversible between your two reviews? I think I had the opposite reaction, in that I fell for its shock effects first time round but felt duped afterwards.
October 2, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I’ve struggled a lot with “Irreversible”. I saw “I Stand Alone”, his first feature, and after that I definitely came to the conclusion that his primary intention is to provoke and shock – and that for its own sake does not interest me.
However, “Irreversible” really got under my skin. I don’t think I had ever felt as angry or upset about a film before, and that was something I had to explore further – I had to find out why.
After a few months I began to realise that “Irreversible” is one of those films that ends up being greater than the sum of its parts in terms of the issues it raises. That’s basically why I changed my mind.
I think there are many examples of finished works going beyond the author’s intent and resonating on a different level in arts and entertainment, I mentioned this in my post on Camp when I discussed “Are You Being Served?” (wildly different example I know, but similar concept).
Hopefully none of that sounded too pretentious.
January 26, 2009 at 7:43 am
[...] French shocker “Irreversible” presents graphic, unspeakable acts of violence, entirely dreamed up by the writer, seemingly to say [...]