One of the hardest films to watch EVER is writer-director Gaspar Noe's 2003 thriller IRREVERSIBLE starring Monica Belluci and Vincent Cassell. Told in reverse chronology the film follows a woman's lover and her former boyfriend through the streets of Paris as they seek to take justice into their own hands after she becomes the victim of a brutal rapist. Again, it's super hard to watch. But worth it – I feel – once the credits roll.
Now, I was unaware but it seems a version presented in chronological order, aptly dubbed IRREVERSIBLE: STRAIGHT CUT debuted at this year’s Venice Film Festival. And today we hear Studiocanal will release restored versions of Noe's original cut and his new "straight cut" sometime in 2020.
Originally created by Noe as a special feature for the film's upcoming Blu-ray, Noe assures fans that his 2003 version “remains both the director’s cut and the real version of the film," but believes this straight cut is strong enough to warrant its own release.
He says:
Putting the scenes in a clockwise order makes it easier to identify with the characters and understand the tale unfolding. The same story is no longer a tragedy, this time it is a drama that brings out the psychology of the characters and the mechanisms that lead some of them to a murderous barbarity. While ‘Irreversible’ has sometimes been wrongly perceived as a ‘rape and revenge’ B movie, here the deadly outcome is all the more depressing. The film can be more easily seen as a fable on the contagion of barbarity and the command of the reptilian brain over the rational mind.
Removing the anti-clockwise structure, a mentally invasive formal concept, brings out the actors’ performances that much more forcefully. The gentleness or violence of the situations and the emotional states of the characters become even more apparent.
Studiocanal’s other planned 4K re-releases in 2020 include classics such as Paul Verhoeven's BASIC INSTINCT and TOTAL RECALL and space opera adventure FLASH GORDON. Stick with us here at AITH and we will make sure to pass along updates as we hear them.