TIME DESTROYS EVERYTHING: An interview with Irreversible director Gaspar Noe and star Monica Bellucci.
By Warren
Curry
3/6/03
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TIME DESTROYS EVERYTHING: An interview with Irreversible director Gaspar Noe and star Monica Bellucci. By Warren
Curry |
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"I thought if the movie was to be useful (I) should portray (violence) as raw as it can be," comments French director Gaspar Noe about his controversial new film Irreversible. Having already been released in numerous countries, as well as being a film festival staple for well over a year, Irreversible will have its chance to stun a wider range of American moviegoers upon its U.S. release on March 7 (in L.A. and New York). Regardless of what you may have read about the film up to this point, no amount of advance warning can provide a suitable defense for the sensory attack this film unleashes. Even the movie's most ardent proponents would have to concede that it's a film for very select tastes. The easily disturbed need not attend.
Irreversible, which stars real-life husband and wife Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel as two lovers whose lives will be tragically and irreparably altered, is gaining most of its notoriety for two horrific scenes of jarringly realistic violence. Using a backward narrative structure (ala Memento) we first see a harrowing act of revenge (of course we aren't yet aware that it's revenge) carried out by an enraged man named Marcus (Cassel) and his more sedate friend, Pierre (Albert Dupontel). Later, we witness the crime, which prompted the lethal response -- a savage rape of Marcus' girlfriend Alex (Bellucci) that Noe captures in one excruciatingly long take. "There are movies when rape is long and then it becomes as painful as it could be on the screen," says Noe. He adds, "Still, if you see (Abel Ferrara's film) Ms. 45, or other movies dealing with rape or crime or killing, it's like the information goes through the screen -- 'this guy has been killed; this woman has been raped' -- but you don't have the emotional sensation of having seen anything."
Bellucci, already a star in Europe and well on her way to becoming one in the U.S. with high-profile roles in the upcoming Tears Of The Sun and both Matrix sequels, was certainly familiar with the director's previous incendiary output. "I saw his first two movies, Carne and I Stand Alone, and thought, 'This guy is crazy, but he's so talented.' When he wanted to work with me I was very thrilled," comments Bellucci. However, the actress definitely doesn't see the director as an artist navigating extreme territory merely in an attempt to shock. She observes, "Gaspar has something to say. For me this film is like A Clockwork Orange, it's like Pi, it's like Requiem For A Dream, it's like Pasolini's movies. All those movies are so difficult to digest, but there is something, there is meaning." According to Bellucci, part of that meaning is, "that the monster is inside us and it can come out at any moment. One of the themes of this film is vengeance, and Gaspar says that vengeance is a natural instinct. But for vengeance we do stupid things. Vengeance makes people blind and for vengeance you do things that can't be taken back; they are irreversible."
While playing the victim in a rape scene that lasts over ten minutes must be difficult enough, Bellucci also mentions that she had to do six takes of the scene because of the physical complexity of capturing it in one shot. So how does an actor prepare for something like this? "The acting process is very difficult to explain; it's something very intimate, very private," explains Bellucci. "That day Vincent asked me, 'Do you want me to stay on set with you?' I said, 'No,' so he went surfing in the South of the France. I was by myself all day long in my house. I had rehearsed the scene one day before, so I knew very well all the positions. I didn't really think about it. I didn't know what I would've done five minutes before shooting. You have everything inside you, you just have to find it."
As the film regresses in time, the camera work transforms from the chaotic handheld that follows Marcus and Pierre as their search for the criminal leads them to a hellish, underground, gay S&M club with the dubious name of The Rectum, to a static frame that captures the earlier warmth and happiness of Marcus and Alex's relationship. "I wanted the movie to be like a mushroom trip -- it would start with a bad trip and then become a good trip," points out Noe. "In a mushroom trip, everything is fuzzy at the beginning; it's like a nightmare, you have glimpses of things you think you see but you can not remember them. I wanted the whole movie to be like that." The film's distinct visual imprint shouldn't come as a surprise, as Noe also served as his own D.P. Regarding the manic opening scenes, he reveals, " I would not frame it with my eyes; just do it with my hands and then I would show to the crane operator what I did with the camera to see if he could do the same things."
Although it's easy to ascertain an obvious method to Noe's madness, the film's untamed blast seems largely attributable to the fact that the filmmaker was working without a traditional screenplay. "The whole movie was very instinctive and organic; it was not a brainiac movie because we didn't have time to write the script," offers the director. "I had a lot of freedom and I wanted to enjoy that freedom, so I had no time to write the dialogue (and asked the actors) to just improvise the dialogue on the set. The whole treatment, the day we started shooting, was just three pages long and each scene would be portrayed in 10 or 12 lines. I didn't know if the scenes would last for 15 minutes or 3 minutes -- on paper they all look the same length."
An artist who clearly strives to use the medium as a confrontational tool, Noe is reluctant to establish a limit in his cinematic assaults. "Whatever can happen in life can happen on the screen. For me nothing is (pornographic)," he states. Bellucci, while displaying bravery clearly above and beyond realistic expectations, doesn't necessarily share the same views. "Gaspar is such a crazy guy. He's not like a normal human being, so you sometimes have to control him a bit." While shooting a scene of post-coital bliss between the actress and her husband, Bellucci laughingly reminisces about the couple adamantly distinguishing their boundaries. "(Gaspar) said, 'You guys, that scene can be real -- you can make love for real.' We said, 'Listen Gaspar, films are films and reality is reality. I'm going to do my best, I'm going to give the best performance I can, I'm trying to be so realistic, but I'm not a porno star.'"
Regardless of a minor difference of opinion, Noe is exuberant about expressing his admiration for Bellucci's courage. "I don't know any other actress at the level of Monica who would've accepted to do the scene the way she did it," he asserts. "Compared to what she had done before, where she was always like the reward for warriors fighting and the ultimate European bimbo, and sometimes she was in movies she didn't care for, maybe this was the first time that someone said, 'In this (movie) you play a woman who is close to yourself.'" Although indisputably on the brink of monumental international acclaim, Bellucci humbly plays down her meteoric career growth. "I don't feel I'm a movie star. I do my movies, but I don't go to parties. I'm surprised; I thought nobody would be interested about Irreversible in America. It's such a crazy European movie," she remarks. And while this may be old news to Matrix fanatics, Bellucci describes her new character in the franchise as, "very mysterious, very dangerous. She's not a victim -- she's in control."
Whereas reactions to Irreversible will differ wildly, the film's detractors (and there are already many) will be hard-pressed to repress a grudging respect for Noe's cinematic mastery. This is a director (like no other currently working), who acutely grasps the emotional and psychological impact of sound and image, and the devastation they can inflict upon the viewer when linked together so expertly and with such primal intentions. When Noe claims that, in contrast to the brutality of the film's first half, "the end of the movie is so melancholic that people come out puzzled and not with anger," he seems to conveniently dismiss the one-minute+ of harsh blinking strobe light (those prone to seizures please take note) which concludes the film. When asked about the inclusion of this visual blitz, Noe responds, "It gives you a sense of fear linked to time. You have this abstract fear that is not linked at all to the plot of the movie and it's very mechanical, so you're more afraid of yourself or your mind's structure than what's going on on the screen."
If the message hasn't already been transmitted
in clear enough language, I must repeat that those thinking about
spending 90 minutes with this film are strongly warned to proceed
with caution. Possibly it's because this writer had been exposed
to all of the disclaimers prior to seeing Irreversible,
inevitably leading to a maximum of heightened awareness as the
film unspooled before my eyes, but never before during the opening
credits of a movie have I experienced such unrest. Those who can
take the relentless early punishment Noe dishes out will certainly
be in for a movie-going experience unlike just about any other.
Whether or not that's a good thing, arguably, has never before
been as polarizing a cinematic subject.
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