Director Gaspar Noé defends the most controversial film ever. Since the last one.

listen to monica bellucci on the rape scene

listen to gaspar noé on the rape scene
listen to gaspar noé on graphic violence
listen to gaspar noé on walkouts
listen to gaspar noé on filmmaking

“A lot of people compare my movie to a mushroom trip,” says filmmaker Gaspar Noé. “Usually mushroom trips start out as bad trips, then they become good ones.” Just like rape and revenge drama Irreversible, then. The latest cause célèbre from the adulte terrible of French cinema, which has now finally been given a UK release.

At Cannes last year the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or, despite mass walkouts from outraged critics. “I don’t blame people for walking out,” says Noé. “I walked out when I saw Straw Dogs for the first time.” It’s the nine-minute rape scene, featuring Monica Bellucci, which seems to be the problem. Although the graphic caving in of a man’s head in a club called Rectum has also had people heading for the exit.

“Violence is violence, why should it not be graphic?” insists Noé, adding that it’s usually men who walk out during the rape. “Control freaks” and “aggressors” who are “suddenly projected into the head of their own wife while they are beating her face.” “There was a member of the crew who’d been raped when she was 15,” says the director, defending the scene. “And she loved the movie.”

Last year, the British censors passed Irreversible uncut, after the French gave it a lenient “16” certificate. Noé doesn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “In Britain they ban a lot of things,” he says, “but there was one tape that was maybe the most shocking tape I have ever seen. It would be banned in France, but over here it was legal. You could buy it in the supermarket. It was called Executions. It was just people being executed.”

So is there anything he wouldn’t show in a film? “No, movies are just movies. They’re not documentaries,” he explains. “If you feel like shooting something then why shouldn’t you shoot it? As long as you’re responsible and not hurting anybody. I would never, for example, kill even a mosquito for one of my movies, or a cockroach. I don’t kill mosquitoes when they come to me, I just wait until they’ve finished their work. Then they go.” Jonathan Carter 30 January 03

Irreversible, on selected release 31 January 03.

useful link: irreversible official site