Irreversible

Gaspar Noé's retina-searing shocker about an assault and its revenge, told in reverse chronology and starring Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel.

Irréversible is arguably one of the cruellest films ever made. Marcus and Pierre set off on a blind rage of revenge after the former’s girlfriend Alex is raped. What follows is a shockingly violent and brutal experience, where the story spools out in reverse. The film amazed and outraged audiences on its initial release, and this piece of New French Extremity has lost none of its intensity.

Noé structured his notorious shocker around his stars Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci, at the time a real-life couple and icons of '90s European cinema, trading on their star power to make their violent descent even more assaulting. This fatalistic film is Noé’s most nauseating by design: a low-frequency sound, known to create a sense of uneasiness in listeners, is heard through most of its runtime. Few films have made better use of the visceral power of cinema before or since.