The Hardest Worst Movie I've Ever Seen.

Have you ever seen a movie that was so intense that it's left images ingrained in your mind for the better part of a week/month/year/century? Movies like, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, THE GREEN MILE, or even OF MICE AND MEN. Just something that either disturbes you or moves you to the point where all you can think about is that one particular scene in that one particular movie? And it then seems as if all your life you've been living in a world that is ultimately scarier than you once thought?
Well what happens if that movie ingrains such thoughts in your head, but at the same time is so fucking terrible and almost unwatchable to the point of naueseation?
I just saw for the time ever the French film IRREVERSIBLE starring Monica Bellucci. This movie is quite literally a guided tour through the absolute worst this planet has to offer. It starts with two men, one naked, one half-assed cross dressed, sitting on a bed three sizes to small talking about how all the nude man can think about is how he had sex with daughter. We then cut to a night club where a man in being wheeled out on a stretcher to an amublance and all sorts of horrible gay remarks are being thrown out at him. Remarks such as, "They don't have rubbers in prison fag, you're going to get the AIDS." Brilliant dialouge as you can see. Another person is being wheeled out in a bag. Dead as a fucking doornail. We then cut into the night club and see a man named Marcus (Vincent Cassel) entering a gay club, frantically looking for a man named La Tenia. It's at this point that I realize that we will be watching this movie backwards. Not quite in the same style as MOMENTO, but more of a scene-by-scene reversibility.
Marcus desperatley searches from room to room looking for this man called La Tenia (Tapeworm). Why? We don't know yet. But his caged animalistic behavior can only lead me to summize that he's out for revenge. His friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) tries in vain to calm him down, but Marcus has clearly made up his mind. The name of the nightclub is called The Rectum, and boy does it live up to it's name. It literally is the seperating asshole of society. It's a shit-hole unlike any I've ever seen or known. It also does nothing but fuel the fire of my intense burning hate for nightclubs. The most debaucherous of acts are commited in front of Marcus as he looks for his prey. Marcus finally finds someone who may where La Tenia is, and of course it has to be the guy on a swing with his ass pointed to the heavens, and his fingers knuckle-depth in his dirt button. He will tell Marcus where La Tenia is, but only if Marcus will fist him first.
Vengence has to be on Marcus' mind. Nothing else but that would have kept me from running screaming out of that club. Nothing but the thought of righteous street justice would allow me to even enter this nightmare.
Marcus does fist the gentleman. But more in the sense that he fists him in the face, and face with a couple of quick jabs. And a bottle across the head doesn't hurt either. Marcus is finally lead to La Tenia and immediately picks a fight. Which he quickly loses in one arm snapping debate. It looks as though in his haste to find La Tenia he didn't take into account that he might not be the better fighter. Just as La Tenia is about to rape Marcus, Pierre shows up. And smashes the living fuck out of La Tenia with the blunt end of the biggest fire extinguisher I've ever seen. But Pierre doesn't stop there. What happens over the course of the next three minutes is the most brutal of face beatings I think I've ever seen captured on film. For what seems like eons the camera, unflinchingly, captures the savagest brutality of a man having the life crushed from him. His face quickly goes from shocked, to beaten, to ugly, to unregonizable, to husk of meat. The sound work combined with the refusal of the camera to cut away makes for one very fucking disturbing scene. All the while this is happening, a group of men have formed a circle around the goings on to watch. One decides to masturbate to it.
God I really hate nightclubs.
The scenes previous deal with Marcus and Pierre trying to find where on earth La Tenia could be. They ask everyone from a poor terrorized taxi driver, to a transvestite prostitute named Guillermo, and even accept assistance from the mob. Through these conversations we find out that La Tenia has raped Alex. Marcus is so furious at this, and so blood thirsty, that all he can think about is finding La Tenia, and the nightclub where he may be at right now.
The next scene previous shows us that we're at a party, and Alex is Monica Bellucci. Bellucci is wearing a dress that leaves, I was going to say very little but fuck it, it leaves nothing to the imagination. She honestly should have just opted to go to the party nude. For some reason she decides right at that moment that an errand must be run. And since she cannot get a taxi she opts to take the subway. While in the subway we see that Guillermo is being roughed up by a pimp. One look at the pimp's face takes you zooming back to the nightclub. Where this man was standing next to the man Marcus identified as La Tenia. If you're any sort of smart you quickly surmise that this man is the actual La Tenia and that Marcus had killed someone "allegedly" innocent. La Tenia now having seen Belluci turns his attention to her, letting Guillermo go. What follows is a scene far more brutal than the death earlier in the movie. La Tenia, in a nine minute, one shot scene, anally rapes Alex. And after nine minutes of the most horrible thing I've ever seen or will ever see in a movie he beats the living hell out of her to the point where she ends up in a coma.
The rest of the movie shows us the life that Marcus and Alex have before their world is shattered into a million pieces. They are happily in love, she just discovered she is pregnant, and the world is a glow. It's almost just as disturbing as the actual rape, to sit an think for the next hour and a half that this happy couple will have everything taken away from them.
As far as the actual brutalness of the film goes, it terrifying. For the hour and a half sitting there knowing this couple will have their happiness obliterated, it's torture. But that's as far as the compliments I have go. This could have been an amazing bit of film-making. The story I'm sad to say is cliche. The dialouge is laughable at best. And I'm not sure why they decided to go this way, but the camera work looks like it was done by strapping a camera to a chimp and letting him roam the city. The only time it comes into complete focus is when something terrible is about to happen. Otherwise, it spins around with no certain destination in mind, or desire to leave the audience orientated. If nothing else, by puting the most brutal scenes up front instead of ending with them, that was a stroke of ingenuity. Otherwise, this really is a mess of a film. But the images it conjures will have you thinking about long after it has ended. The world this movie inhabits is what I thnk hell must be like.
All I'm certain of, is after having watched this and TAKEN I'm never setting foot in France. Fuck France.