Irreversible is a film in a league of its own. It is shocking, cerebral, and a turns the tropes of a typical revenge flick upside-down.
The rape scene is possibly the longest and most graphic scene of physical abuse against a woman ever on screen. When my friend and I first watched this film in the cinema in 2002, there were prominent signs plastered throughout the lobby, that bluffed "Warning: there are hidden cameras surveilling every cinema, and we reserve the right to remove any customers displaying indecent behavior. We couldn't imagine that a cinema-goer would want to masturbate during a film that was advertised as boasting a 9+ minute rape scene, but there was one thing we hadn't realized yet. Monica Bellucci is a sexy bitch.
