By: Carlos Lobos Jr
Director and Screenwriter Gaspar Noé
created a beautiful yet disturbing film that depicts the primitive hatred one man can experience, driving him to commit the worst of crimes. The way Noe shoots the scenes in the beginning of the film feels like you’re in a freaking roller coaster.
You never really get to focus on what you’re seeing in some of the scenes. The film is shown so that every scene is one continuous shot, but the story is told chronologically backwards. In other words we start at the end and end at the beginning. . By doing so the story itself it leaves you feeling more sympathy for the three main characters Alex (Monica Belluci), Marcus (Vinccent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Duponte)
The film opens with the credits rolling backwards which is really cool. Then the camera starts to go all crazy, spinning, focusing and not focusing. It’s a trip. So, after a while we see two men in an apartment. One is old and naked, the other one kind of young and clothed. They are both sitting on the bed talking. The old man says “Time destroys everything” and that sets the mood for the film. They have a short conversation about the old man’s life and what happened to him. They get to talking and after a while we hear an ambulance. Then the camera starts going all nuzto again. When camera stops we see the police arresting some guy, Pierre, and they’re taunting him with gay slurs.
They put him in a police car and we see his face, he has no emotion… he looks like he just saw a ghost. After that, yep that’s right the camera goes all whacko on us again. We are brought to see two men start arguing inside this club, a gay S&M club where the interior is dark and red. They’re looking for this guy all the time the camera is spinning, going really wild. It’s a cool way to show how frustrated Marcus is. Then we get the infamous bashing of the head with the fire extinguisher scene. Let me just say, that I read a lot of reviews before seeing the movie. They all talked about the guy that uses the extinguisher and how disgusting it was. Yes it was disgusting! I have never seen anything like that before in a movie. I don’t know what was more disturbing. Either looking at the poor sap getting his brains smashed in or listening the extinguisher go up and down like 30 times in is head. At times I wanted to look back, it lasted for at least 5 minutes. The aftermath is a guy dead with his face literally ripped off. Then we go back and start to get to know why Marcus is so upset, Alex was raped and is in a coma. Marcus and Pierre are determined to find the guy who did this. They steal a cab, hassle some spanish hooker and it all leads them to “The Rectum”, the gay S&M club. I’m not going to go into detail, but skip a few minutes before they hassled the hookers and we see poor Alex get raped. The rape scene is like your watching a snuff film. It lasts for at least 9 minutes and during that time you feel disgusted for what you’re witnessing, you can’t do anything but just watch.
After he’s done with her, he hits her a bunch of times, causing her to slip into a coma.
After all the chaos we see the bright nice story of Alex, Marcus, and Pierre having fun at a party and joking around. We see Alex and Marcus as a couple being so happy and preparing for their life together. It’s quite sad to see this because you know what’s in store for them. The ending is a heartbreaker; it literally tears you up inside to find out what Alex had just found out early in the day.
I personally really like this movie, It had a good story, great direction, and very disturbing images. This movie is not for everyone, but give it a try and you might just like it.
Score: 9 / 10
