An unredeeming exercise in voyeurism and violence

Right from the beginning - which is in fact the end, since Irreversible, like Memento, tracks backwards - you know things are going to be brutal. The credit-crawl to this controversial French film is flipped, mirror-image letters and words, the music is whirry and weird, and then suddenly the whole rolling block of text starts veering off to one side, as if it's about to fall from the screen altogether.

And if vertigo hasn't set in yet, it soon does, as the camera in Gaspar Noe's excruciating exercise in voyeurism, provocation and pretentiousness starts zagging down the ill-lit corridors of a gay nightclub. It's the seamier side of Paris, to say the least, as clusters of naked, panting men engage in anonymous sex, in bondage and whatever, and Irreversible's crazed protagonist, Marcus (Vincent Cassel), goes from room to room in search of the man who has just raped his girlfriend.

Before long, someone's getting his head bashed in - literally, with a fire extinguisher. The body jerks on the floor in a bloody pulp, and the audience, I dare say, experiences similar sensations.

A story of violation and revenge, Irreversible has a centerpiece (I guess you could call it that) that is an uncut 10 minutes of savagery, hate and humiliation: A beautiful woman in a flimsy party dress makes the unwise decision to use a pedestrian tunnel to navigate a busy boulevard. It's late at night, a man is there, and he attacks and sodomizes her. And we see it all.

There are arguments to be made for why Noe, and Monica Bellucci, the actress who plays Alex, the rape victim (and who happens to be costar Cassel's partner in real life), would want to tell this story, and insist that audiences see it. "Time destroys everything" is the movie's mantra - an epigram we see at both the film's front and back ends - and it points to the irreparable damage that people, and circumstances, can do to a life.

The film, in its leering reenactment of a drug-and-drink-soaked party - sexual aggression and animal lust to a thumping beats-per-minute soundtrack - also tries to define the equation between "normal" sexual behavior and extreme sexual violence. It doesn't really wash.

The truly disturbing thing about Irreversible - which also boasts the fat, child-molesting butcher of Noe's short film, Carne, and his first feature, I Stand Alone - is that the filmmaking is so accomplished, so pulsating and visceral, that it makes you question your initial reactions. Maybe, you think, there is something daring and brilliant going on here: an excursion into the darkest territories of the human soul.

But no. In the end - or the beginning - there is no point to all this. Or at least not a point worth making, and making us watch.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Irreversible * (Out of four stars)

Produced by Christophe Rossignon, written and directed by Gaspar Noe, photography by Benoit Debie, music by Thomas Bangalter and Beethoven, distributed by Lions Gate Films. In French with subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 34 mins.

Marcus. . . Vincent Cassel

Alex. . . Monica Bellucci

Pierre. . . Albert Dupontel

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (extreme violence, sexual violence, nudity, profanity, drugs)

Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse and Ritz Sixteen/NJ