Gaspar Noé divided critics and viewers with his unsettling debut feature, I Stand Alone. Irreversible makes no attempts to bridge that gap. Structured as a narrative in reverse (in the vein of Christopher Nolan’s Memento), the film begins with a revenge scene of extremely violent proportions. Marcus (Cassel) and his friend Pierre (Dupontel) desperately search a gay S&M club for the man who has violated Marcus’s girlfriend (Bellucci, Cassel’s real-life partner). Noé makes metaphoric use of space with dizzying transitions that reveal both the underbelly of life in Paris as well as the hostile intensity that emerges in an all-male environment—one of several points of controversy in the film. The rape itself is filmed in a single, stationary ten-minute take, forcing the viewer to confront the horror of the act and its irreversible consequences. Not for the faint-hearted, this virtuoso film is a fascinating example of cinematic control and viewer manipulation.