Irreversible (2002)

5 STARS

“Irréversible”

General Information:

All information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

18        97 min                          –  Crime  | Drama  | Mystery                 –              31 January 2003(UK)

Director

Gaspar Noé

Writer

Gaspar Noé

Stars

Monica Bellucci;  Vincent Cassel;  Albert Dupontel

Plot:

Irreversible (2002)

Events of one night unfold in reverse-chronological order, opening with events after a tragic rape, and then progressing backwards and backwards before the brutal act occurred.

Review:

I felt physically sick whilst watching Irreversible. But I mean this as the highest compliment possible. It is my belief that if you dislike this film because it is sick then you are entirely missing the point. Rape and violence on screen should hurt the viewer, if not, the filmmaker is in a somewhat ‘dodgy’ moral-position.  I confess, I felt a vile churning feeling in my stomach throughout and at some points, I closed my eyes; furthermore, I felt that horrific feeling of actually wanting to be physically sick, but being unable to. This is the most extreme reaction I’ve ever had to a film.

The ‘unwatchability-factor’ of the film is highly connected to its blunt, if not obvious message: rape and violence are barbaric acts and fate is inescapable.

The film is infamous for an 8-minute rape scene, where the camera stays icily still and forces the viewer to watch. It is often the case that rape or violence is portrayed in film via cheap gimmicks, no doubt used due to the ludicrousness of censorship-culture: the camera turns away and you hear a scream. Well, I’m sorry, but in real life, that’s not what happens when someone is brutally assaulted. The victim experiences the entire barbaric act, and it is morally-right that the act isn’t cheapened or made to be less horrific. Gaspar Noe understands this and thus makes the viewer witness the entire thing, thereby showing what rape really is. This pleases me because there seems to be a lot of ‘rape culture’ infesting its way through our world: people discussing the act as if it’s a joke or a game. Show such people Irreversible, they won’t be laughing anymore. I don’t wish to degrade the act of rape to something less barbaric or fun, but the only way I can describe the scene simply is that it is “the cinematic equivalent of being sexually assaulted”. That is genuinely how I felt. It is one of the most brutal and powerful scenes I have frankly, ever seen in any film. The scene almost (heavy stress on almost)  makes the viewer feel like the victim, Alex (Monica Bellucci), that they see on screen, as the scene is: unforgiving, uncompromising, brutal, and it feels longer than it actually is, and you will (horrifically) always remember it.

It is of course a shame that this is all the film is famous for. The film isn’t strictly about rape, or even violence for that matter. (This is 8 minutes in  a film that lasts for 97 minutes.) The film is about the inevitability of fate. The narrative of the film goes backwards. Thus, the point being, that we ironically know what is going to happen to Alex before she does. As the film draws to a close, it ends on her beginning the day, we now know everything that will happen to her, whilst she is blissfully unaware. The infamous 8-minute scene plays halfway through the film. Following this are thirty minutes of laughter, contentedness (and perhaps even, tranquility). It is endless shots of Alex, her boyfriend and her friends smiling, drinking and having fun. Personally, I found these scenes more disturbing than the rape itself – what is more disturbing: the concept of rape, or not knowing in the future that you will be sexually-assaulted, and that it is an inevitable event in your life’s own timeline? Those brutal 8-minutes or more will always happen to Alex and she will never be able to escape them, they are a fixed point in time. Thus, the film transcends cheap exploitation into a film about predetermination and a very bleak form of existentialism. Think of it as a very brutal Art-film.

When everything was happy…

Stylistically, the film is fantastic. Gaspar Noe is the most inventive director around when it comes to sound-design and cinematography. His camera spins and glides in a dizzying fashion through each scene, quite literally spinning endlessly around characters. You feel physically repulsed by the cinematography as the constant spinning builds up a sense of giddying, dizzying, vomit-inducing dread. The sound design is a consistent drone which adds to the visuals, but furthermore, it contains a specific-note which when played constantly apparently taps into a part of your psyche which produces that feeling of being physically sick. The film understands that depth and style must be combined together to make a truth. The concept of fate is thus interlinked with the feeling of sickness and revulsion, to make the audience contemplate the negative concepts and ideas that eschew from fate and predetermination.

This is a provocative film which is at once very intense psychologically and very intense intellectually due to the philosophical notions that it puts forwards. It deserves to be commended in the highest regards.

The spinning, lurching camera-movements in Irreversible

Atmospheric visual-flair of Irreversible

Conclusion:

Perhaps one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen. But also one of the most profound. Indeed, the depth adds to the disturb as it makes the terrifying sequences and concepts of the film stay with you. Irreversible is truly cinematic. Indeed, this is the kind of film which going to the cinema is all about.

Baise-Moi (2000)

0.5 STARS

“Rape Me”

General Information:

All information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249380/

18       77 min                          –  Crime  | Drama  | Thriller                 –              3 May 2002(UK)

Director

Coralie;  Virginie Despentes

Writer

Coralie;  Virginie Despentes

Stars

Raffaëla Anderson;  Karen Lancaume;  Céline Beugnot

Plot:

Baise-Moi (2000)

A rape victim and a prostitute ‘rebel against society’ by going on a pointless rampage of violence and sex.

Review:

Baise-Moi really is just a pointless waste of images and any decent human being’s attention. It’s a film which wants to be shocking and outrageous but never actually is. After viewing it, I IMDBd it – only to discover that this movie actually has ‘fans’. I place the word: fans, in-between apostrophes there because I believe these are the sort of people who are tricking themselves into believing that the film actually has some depth, simply by over-intellectualising all of the events that they see – the sort of person that believes that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a Marxist critique on Nazi Germany (i.e. the chainsaw-wielding ‘Leatherface’ being Hitler himself, and all of his cannibal family being members of the SS, and no doubt intentionally searching for a shot where the coincidental placings of decaying flesh and/or bones forms the shape of swastika).

And anyone who claims that this film is remotely ‘feminist’ is directly insulting Emily Davison.

The film’s setting is in the seedy underbelly of France. A place where drugs, sex, violence and rape are in every corner. Imagine Hobo With a Shotgun without the winking-at-the-camera self-awareness or the irony. The film unfolds in a very serious way, as if it has something interesting to say, and that all of the comic moments are actually satire – this can only be proven by its rather confrontational title when translated into English (‘Rape Me’). It’s like a Gaspar Noe film, without any of the style, visual flair or depth.

The film pretty much opens with a rape scene. The scene itself is rather effective. It’s shot with a manic hand-held camera – which captures the chaotic and brutal nature of the event itself without being so shaky that you can’t see what’s going on. There’s a horrific moment where one of the characters lies on the floor, defenseless, pretty much waiting to be raped, whilst she hears the sounds of desperation and agony from her friend who is being raped. It’s a powerful moment, and perhaps the best sequence in the film, because it injects an emotional reaction from the viewer during a scene of violence. I’ve awarded the half-star purely for this scene. I think the fact that I responded to this scene is pure luck on the filmmakers’ part: a cinematic fluke, if you will. When the scene ended, I didn’t feel that sense of ‘relief’ which you usually feel after a tense scene in a film. In fact, I wasn’t left shaken. The rape scene itself reminded me heavily of one of those comedians who just tell cheap cliché jokes which aim to offend, and where all the punch-lines are pretty much similar. You  briefly chuckle; the laugh is never remembered, and the gag never quoted.

How to recover from a harrowing experience such as brutal gang-rape – courtesy of Baise-Moi.

Following this, the two girls then go on a hedonistic rampage. The film then nudges towards us endless sex scenes and murder scenes. I use the word ‘nudges’ there because the film has literally no conviction with its content and subject matter at all. For violence or sex to be shocking or to stimulate any emotional response from the viewer, it has to be violently thrown towards our eyeballs with some form of visual flair or cinematic style. I am reminded of Kevin Smith’s directional style in Clerks. He presses the ‘record button’ and simply lets the actors ‘get on with it’. The same here. The record button is pressed and we are shown a recording of some sex and violence. Sex and violence on its own isn’t particularly shocking, it’s the ideas that lay behind them. I think the ‘point’ of the film is that the two girls go on this rampage for no reason whatsoever. The killings are random. If this is the case, then the notion of murders occurring without any motif is an unnerving one – but the film never takes advantage, thinking that by simply showing us bullets causing blood-wounds and penises going inside vaginas is simply enough. “A true thought, badly expressed, is a lie.”

The film is part of a new movement in cinema known as ‘New French Extremity’. One of the key auteurs, as I’ve already mentioned, in this movement, is Gaspar Noe – a man who in Enter the Void showed us a sex scene from inside of the vagina itself. No, I’m not joking. Now, you may find this disgusting or shocking or blunt or whatever – but this is exactly the point. This movement is a call-back to the 70s exploitation flicks and ‘video-nasties’. People would queue up to see these films which shocked, aroused and perversely entertained. These films were exhilarating and thrilling. The problem with Baise-Moi is that it is anything but. (And this isn’t necessarily because it doesn’t present us with a rather ‘original’ love-making scene).

Seedy, psychedelic head-trip. Gaspar Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’.

But this isn’t the case with the film – it’s all images and nothing else. Thus due to this, the film is beyond bland.

I think my reaction to the film was quite simply this:

Oh look, there’s a woman sucking a man’s penis. Oh look, he’s sucking her vagina. Oh look, they’ve gone into a bar and massacred everyone there. Oh look, they’re consuming drugs. Oh look, his penis is going inside of her. Oh look, he’s just orgasmed. Oh look, she’s just orgasmed. Oh look, they’re all dead. Oh look, he’s screaming in agony. Oh look, there’s more dead people. Oh look, she’s screaming in agony. Oh look, she just said a naughty word. Oh look, an orgy. Oh look, he just said a naughty word. Oh look, another orgy. Oh look, another penis going inside a vagina. Oh look…

To which my reaction to all of this was quite simply: “So what?”

Verdict:

Not shocking. Not exciting. Not entertaining. Not thrilling. Not horrifying. A trashy piece of nonsense which takes away any emotional reaction to the scenes that it’s in. So bland and dull that the names of the characters escape me, and I couldn’t even remember which one was ‘the rape-victim’ and which one was ‘the prostitute’.

As If I Am Not There (2010)

4 STARS

General Information:

Information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1456477/

 Director

Juanita Wilson

Stars

Natasa Petrovic; Fedja Stukan; Jelena Jovanova

Plot:

As If I’m Not There (2010)

Samira (Petrovic), a teacher from Sarajevo moves into a new village as a replacement teacher. Suddenly, the town is infiltrated and its inhabitants are made prisoners of war and are sent to a camp.

Review:

As If I Am Not There is a perfectly-titled and deeply human film which looks at its central female character, Samira, not as a fictional construct that follows stage-directions and speaks dialogue but as an actual human being. Perhaps this is because of the script, or lack thereof. The film contains minimal dialogue, which is very fitting to its emotional effect. We become more astute to subtle noises in the film. The most uncomfortable being that of a table shaking and creaking whilst Samir is being raped with her head forced down onto the surface. 

Following scenes of psychological and sexual abuse, our central character simply stares into the distance and tries to busy herself with something else. Due to this, she is, in a sense, a deeply relatable character – experiencing the most instinctual of emotions which we have all felt: fear, rebellion, submission, escape, anger and upset. Yet, she is also simultaneously ambiguous. Throughout we ask ourselves: what is she thinking? What lies behind that look in her eyes? Is her expression true or fake? Does she feel like she’ll ever get out? Can she even experience emotion? Does she have any friends or family? Her face is a puzzle in itself.

The eyes are the window to the soul…but what are they saying?

The film follows the narrative conventions firmly rooted in Arthouse cinema. There isn’t a plot as such, in the sense that characters don’t strive to get from A to B. Instead, there are lots of subtle events which follow on after the next – like life. The film’s main theme and idea is about human atrocity: the mass committing of sexual abuse against women in the Bosnian Civil War. The way in which the film deals with issues of rape is understated considering the amount of times it hints at or depicts it. The most memorable scene is the first time Samira is raped by three men, and then urinated on afterwards. Following this, the film presents sexual abuse by showing female characters enter the rooms looking down, and hardly able to walk. The film is more about the effects of sexual abuse than the sexual abuse itself.

 This is probably because – in my own personal opinion – the scenes are underplayed. Women slowly get undressed, looking down. There is no sign of struggle. They bend over the desk and simply wait. Once it happens, they cry and there is intense uncomfort. They then go back to their room as if nothing had happened. The latter part is the point. Although the film does focus on the horrifying acts themselves, that isn’t its prior concern. It is concerned with the aftermath: how it leaves the women. Initially, frightened. But then eventually, they feel nothing, it is part of their day to day lives. Rape has become a routine – this is why the understatement is used.

Eventually, the rape has made our central character incapable of feeling. She is brought up by the captain. He is never rough, but instead, soft and gentle She is more unsettled by this as when she is touched, it is usually in violence as opposed to caring. She has now been so desensitised that she has become incapable of love.

Although the film is dark in content, it isn’t as dark in its style. It is more moving and powerful than it is disturbing or frightening. Yet, is this a weakness? For a film which concerns that of sexual abuse quite frequently, surely it should be less dampened down and more horrific? If the film wants to be honest, the rape scenes shouldn’t be unsettling, they should be fist-clenchingly terrifying. Should rape reallybe understated?

Verdict:

Powerful drama with an interesting central performance. The minimal dialogue and the overt suggestion makes an intriguing film which will slightly unsettle and move.

Cannibal Holocaust: UNCUT (1980)

4 STARS

General Information:

The information from below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078935/?ref_=sr_2

18  95 min  –  Adventure | Drama | Horror  –  7 February 1980 (Italy)

Director

Ruggero Deodato

Writer

Gianfranco Clerici (story)

Stars

Robert Kerman; Francesca Ciardi; Perry Pirkanen

Plot:

Subversive 80s video-nasty cult-classic. Filmmakers who went to shoot a documentary concerning Amazonian cannibals have been missing for over two months. A professor then discovers that they are dead, but more importantly finds the footage that they made.

Review:

Cannibal Holocaust (1980): The film’s tagline was “Can a movie go too far?” – was this describing the film within Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Holocaust itself?

There has been much written about Cannibal Holocaust’s behind-the-scenes mal-practice. Specifically the shots where we see a real live turtle’s head and feet cut off, and watch as its entrails are disembowled. This review will not focus or be influenced by the horrific mal-practices of the film. Yet this does not mean that I condone what occurred on the set of this film – far from it. However I firmly believe that rating the quality of a film should be about the film itself: the images, sounds, editing, narrative devices (etc), not  when it was made or what occurred on the set itself. To use the cliché to accentuate this point: “Let the film speak for itself.” There has been extensive analysis on the morals of the filmmakers and how their anti-sensationalist message collides with their practice, however, in this review, I seek to decipher whether the film is of quality, and what elements construct to shape my rating of it.

Cannibal Holocaust is a surprisingly intelligent horror-film about the dangers and morals of sensationalism, and what struck me more about the film was how it was less about the gorey found-footage of the filmmakers being beaten, raped and eaten alive – but more about how the television producers want to get the footage put on screen – and obviously, the makers of the footage. Who are the real savages? The cannibals, or the people who provoke them to the extent that they are able to make the most shocking documentary ever made? The film is excellently structured as we jump backwards and forwards from the found footage to the story concerning whether the producers will or won’t release its contents. But what is even more surprising is that we don’t even see the found footage until around forty minutes in. Judging by the reaction to this film, you’d imagine that the film would be a ninety minute gore-fest, filled to the brim with legs being hacked off, stones being used as raping implements, and brain-meat being chewed on. Far from it. Instead we start off with news that the filmmakers have been missing for over two months. The film doesn’t start in the jungle of Amazonia but rather in the concrete jungle of New York, and we cut backwards and forwards between these two locations.

A professor and various soldiers then go into the Amazon to find the filmmakers. They then meet the tribes themselves. Later on, they then discover various skulls and bones propped onto a tree, with one of the skeletons still holding a camera. (I hate it when that happens).

Awkward.

Between them arriving and this infamous shock-shot, we have prolonged scenes of them interacting with the cannibals, and we observe their way of life: from the charmingly innocent (naked girls throwing water at one of the men in a river), to the gruesome: a brutal scene of a girl being dragged from a boat, covered in mud, and then raped with a large stone.

After collecting the footage, the professor is now famous and is interviewed live on TV. He then meets up with a producer who wants to release the footage to ‘educate’ the public. We now see what really happened to the filmmakers and how they ended up as skeletons, one of them holding a camera.

The leader of the crew is Alan Yates, and we discover that he is the prime reason for the film-crew’s impending doom. His practice is to use set-ups to provoke a reaction from the cannibals: burning down one of their huts with the tribes-members still inside is the most horrific. He is as savage as they are. We are shown a previous film that he has made. It involves numerous executions of children, mothers and fathers for highly political reasons. Some of these executions were faked in order to provoke a reaction from the viewer.

The iconic shot of the film: Are the filmmakers as savage as the savages themselves?

Ironically, the footage we see of Alan and his crew is not fake. Their deaths are not staged. Eventually the cannibals surround him and his crew. I imagine you can figure out what happens next. The rest is then shot with heavy use of shaky hand-held camera to miraculous effect. I usually despise shaky-camera techniques, but here it is the best I have ever seen. It adds to the documentary-realism of the film: this is happening, this is not fake. They are being pinned down, tortured, mutilated, raped, killed and then eaten. More to the point though, the film exploits the viewer as a voyeur. It knows its effect on us. It knows that we want to look away, but can’t, because we are so curious, and when they are finally killed and cannibalised, we are made to feel horrible for feeling curious. Some people watch horror-films to see how far they can be pushed and to see how shocking the film is. This is why people went to see The Human Centipede and A Serbian Film. There are moments in those films where you want to look away, but can’t. But what if the deaths were real? What if it was no longer a horror film, but actual live footage? Cannibal Holocaust exploits this issue, and it knows that we (and the producers of the found-footage) will find it irresistable to look away, even if it may be real. We buy into shocking news-stories, we are just as bastardised and curious as the journalists themselves.

The footage no longer becomes sensationalistic footage that will make a good news story, but instead harrowingly brutal scenes of humans being killed and the killers who have already lost their humanity – and TV executives wanted to make money out of this.

Of course, the fatal flaw of Cannibal Holocaust is the concept that it appears to revel in shocking us. It does shock, in certain sequences my mouth formed a prominently large ‘O’ shape. Yet simultaneously it attacks shock-tactics. Is this the point? Perhaps so. I am in no doubt that the film’s aims were to shock the audience – the title itself can be mere proof of this. But it feels like two films: one which is to simply shock the audience, and the other which opposes this concept. Sometimes these two films conjoin and work, sometimes they clash. Can a film shock the viewer and simultaneously attack shock-tactics? I’m not quite sure. What is clear however is that Cannibal Holocaust is exceptionally good at shocking and criticising those who shock. The shocking scenes of cannibalism are so realistic that you could easily mistake this for a full-blown snuff film. The satirical scenes against shock-tactics and media-sensationalism are so effective that they critique the producers, the filmmakers and our reactions right down to the bone.

Verdict:

Perhaps the most hypocritical film ever made due to the fact that Ruggero Deodato was a sensationalist pig and used mal-practice, but if you ignore that and just look at the film itself we have one of the greatest horror films ever made. Here we have a brutal, blunt satire on how the media will go too far to shock, and how we are just as savage as the journalists for getting sucked into it.

N.B. Just to clarify, no humans were killed or cannibalised in this film – the deaths presented are just incredibly realistic.

Horror Fest: DAY 7

After taking a day off of horror films, yesterday I decided to watch a horror film, only to discover that a vagina dentata movie stormed straight into my eye sockets…

Teeth (2007):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780622/

Plot:

Dawn is a young girl, brought up and raised with traditional right-wing values. No sex before marriage, and masturbation is a big no-no. She then suddenly falls in love with a boy, and when she doesn’t want sex, he rapes her, only to lead with his penis being chopped off by the teeth inside her vagina…

Review:

Teeth (2007)

Teeth. A movie with a rubbish title considering its subject-matter. I’ve come up with my own alternative-titles:

1)    Attack of the Penis-Chomping Vagina

2)    Revenge of the Clitoris

3)    My Pussy Will Bite You

4)    The Killer Kunt

5)    Sharktopussy

6)    If You Have Sex With Me, I’ll Bite Off Your Genitals

7)    Cock-block 2: Penis No More

8)    Extremist- Feminist 5: Bush of Thorns

9)    Sex and the City 4

10)  Slice the Sausage or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Chop Your Dick Off

Even though I managed to make all of those titles, I must point out that the film unfolds in a very serious way – of course there are a few comic moments (a dog eats a chopped off penis) – but it doesn’t unfold in a so-bad-it’s good fashion. Jokes aside, I genuinely don’t quite know what I saw and I think I’m still recovering. All, I know is, that I definitely did like it, but I’m unsure why. There are moments in this movie which are between shock and comedy. Dawn goes to a doctor after she realises that her genitals have gnashing capabilities. The doctor inspects her vagina, and puts a few fingers up there to see if everything is okay. Suddenly we hear something inside of her bite down, and his hand is literally stuck: there’s a sequence where he tries to pull it out, only ending up pulling Dawn with him, and a few fiddling moments later we cut to see four bloody fingers strewn on the floor. A shame. By this point, my sympathy was for Dawn. Bizarrely, I wanted the doctor to help her, to find her treatment to take the teeth out. I think this is why I’m so confused. I genuinely cared about the main character and had a moving emotional experience with her, even though this film has the most ludicrous plot-lines in cinema history. I was saddened when nobody could help her deadly vagina.

There are moments where I sympathise with Dawn and then following them there are moments where I just want to slap her for her overtly-right-wing nature. There’s a moment where she is about to masturbate, but stops and just whispers to herself: purity, purity.  The film is essentially Everything You Needed to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)  combined with Jaws.

The setting is like some kind of David Lynch town: perfect America, white picket fences, bright green grass, and a pretty blonde girl who gives speeches to young kids to be pure – to which they then disturbingly chant back epigrams associated with sex afterwards. She rides a bicycle towards her school like some kind of innocent nun, romantic piano music plays in the background – all the while, we know that her pussy has jaws. It’s a bizarre experience.

Bizarrely, the film has a message as well. Everytime she doesn’t have consent when having sex, the teeth set into action – but if she consents, they do not. Teeth is one of the most stridently anti-masculine anti-rape films ever made next to the 1978 exploitation masterpiece, I Spit on Your Grave.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Either way, I don’t quite know what I saw, but I definitely did like the tagline:

Every rose has its thorn.

Verdict: 4/5