I saw the movie Irreversible in NYC in June, and it has taken me some time to process what I saw. It is difficult to write about it without discussing two specific scenes, so I will preface and end my remarks with a "spoiler" note.

Irreversible takes place in one day, and like the movie Memento, moves backwards in time, scene by scene. Unlike Memento, there is only one thread in the film - Memento had two, one going forward and one backward. Ostensibly, the film is about one disastrous day in the lives of three people, two of them a couple. Alex and Marcus awake to a glorious day, and meet up later with their friend Albert, to attend a party in the evening. The film's title is appropriate on many levels, for what's done is done, and cannot be reversed, no matter how horrific or wonderful the moment or event. Only the audience can watch these events in reverse order, each small act presenting us with more detail, allowing us to knit together the entire story.

The movie opens with credits that are running backwards and virtually impossible to follow, crowding the screen and moving at angles that are irritating. Two older men appear, sitting on a bed, one naked, discussing who knows what. On the street below, outside of a gay club called Rectum, two men, Marcus and Albert, are being arrested by the police, one of them being seriously injured. The camera then steps back in time, and begins a dizzying trip through the club, moving too quickly to allow the viewer to focus on anything; instead, I almost felt nauseus, which might have been intentional for all I know. We hear someone asking, over and over, about a man named La Tenia, and this continues until the camera catches up with the two men arrested in the previous scene, as they begin interrogating two other men in the club.

SPOILER BEGINS.

What follows is the first of two scenes during which many viewers have walked out of this movie. A fight begins between two of the men, and one visciously breaks the arm of the other. A third man steps in, and slams the head of the arm-breaker with a fire extinguisher. Before we can register what we're seeing, he has slammed the man's head so many times that there is nothing left but pulp and a jaw, all of this presented to us in one continuous take.

As the film moves backwards, we learn that Alex, Marcus's lover (Albert being her previous lover) has been brutally raped, and that their search for the rapist led them to the gay club. They leave a party, see a woman in a stretcher being taken away by medics, her face bloodied beyond belief, and they realize who she is. The scene that follows is perhaps the most disturbing I have ever watched. The girl friend, played by Monica Bellucci, leaves the party and heads for the metro, or subway. While in the subway, she is attacked and anally raped by a man who then repeatedly punches her in the face and then slams her face into the pavement, over and over.