Irreversible (2002) with director/writer Gaspar Noé
Comments on the Film
On the opening credits
There are few films with
interesting credits – There's Godard and Orson Welles' films – but credits are
definitely an integral part of the movie, so from the first image you try to
match everything with the look of the film. So here [studio names] 'Canal' has
a backwards 'N' and 'Mars' has a backwards 'R,' and here are the end credits in
reverse, and the subtitler's name would appear here. During festival screenings
people thought the projectionist had made a mistake, that he'd loaded the film
backwards, so people will often start clapping to alert the projectionist, but
then they realise that no, it's not at all a mistake, it was done on purpose.
In fact, there will be no credits at the end of the film. I don't like getting
to the end of a movie and then having to read the credits, so it's better at
the beginning before you're into it.
On Philippe Nahon
And there's my idol, Philippe Nahon,
the star of my movies Carne and I Stand Alone, who I absolutely wanted in this
film and who wanted to be in this film. We shot the film chronologically, although it plays in reverse chronological order, so we shot this scene at the
end. He waited for weeks to know what role he would play, so in the end I told
him, "You'll be in a room, speaking with my friend Stéphane Drouot," who is one
of the directors, if not the director, I most admired as I was starting to make
movies. He directed a film called Star Suburb, which won the César for Best
Short Film, and after that he wrote a number of screenplays that were never
made into films. So Philippe Nahon asked what his role was and I said,
"You'll be talking to him as the butcher from Carne and I Stand
Alone," which both surprised and pleased him. We didn't really know what
they would talk about. The dialogue was improvised in the rest of the film as
well, but I did tell him he had to say he'd slept with his daughter, because it
was unclear at the end of I Stand Alone, and that he had to start with "Time destroys
all things," which was for a long time the title of the film instead of
Irreversible.
On editing
More invisible cuts. We switch to shots taken
from a car or a truck. There are a lot of shots linked together and made
possible through the film's digital postproduction. The film was shot in Super
16 so the cameras would be light. We used Aaton and Minima cameras. The film is
composed of many short takes or sequence shots which, even though they were
shot at different times like in the next sequence, were all linked together
once we had chosen the right takes in HD video at MacGuff, the postproduction
company for the film. This gives the impression of continuity, as if a fly was
flying from one truck to the next. It was a lot of work finding the takes that
would match at the right speeds and would match the direction of the rotation,
but it was absolutely magical to be able to do postproduction digitally. Until
now, most of my films were edited in 16mm or 35mm, and there was no way to
correct technical errors or do morphing or other effects possible today with
video, which widens the director's possibilities in terms of cinematic
language. There's no way this movie could have been made in this way a decade
ago.
On camerawork
The idea of making the camera fly around
in every direction, I'm not sure where that came from but it's something that
came naturally as we were shooting the movie. At the beginning of the shoot I
wanted to use very stable shots for the scenes at the end of the movie and get
progressively more chaotic. Here, the camera is totally floating and, as I said
about the previous shot, almost like a flying spirit with no sense of
direction, an unexplained disembodied vision. Now we've moved to a Technocrane
shot we filmed another day, the invisible cut from inside to outside was made
digitally in postproduction. And there you have it. Here we see again the
possibilities of that marvellous crane, the Technocrane. There was no shot list
for any of the handheld or crane camerawork. I said, "Let's try to have
some fun with this." None of the shots were predetermined. Once we had the
equipment, the idea was just to do the strangest things possible with the toys
at our disposal.
On improvisation
The whole movie has improvised
dialogue. I gave them instructions as to the intended outcome of the sequences,
sometimes a couple of lines to use, but otherwise I think what comes out in the
moment is so much more intense than what you can prepare in advance. I'd
already tried this in different ways in my previous films, but I thought I
would push it further. In any case, on the first day of shooting we had a
four-page script with not more than 10 or 15 lines of description for each of
the sequences, so on each day of filming we would rehearse and then do the sequence.
It could last six or 16 minutes, but in the end the length was dictated by the
reality of the shoot, not anything predetermined.
On music
I love this music here by Thomas Bangalter,
one of the two members of Daft Punk, who did the music for the whole film. At
first the film was slated to have music from various sources, but since Thomas
had given me the rights to the party music I showed him an early edit and said
I loved his stuff and he could propose other ideas. So he did come forward with
some music and I think one of the first pieces he proposed was the one in the
taxi, which I think is great and worth listening to on the soundtrack CD. There
are pieces sometimes that we only hear for maybe 15 seconds, and almost
inaudibly because of the mixing, and they are dreadful when you hear them
alone.
On the rape
Regarding this sequence, which was perhaps
the most talked about when it was shown at Cannes and in the media, it comes
from various sources, stories I've heard from real life and from my perception
of similarly themed films like Deliverance or Straw Dogs. One thing that stood
out for me was that for a film to feel violent it has to be believable. I don't
like movies that deal with a certain subject, then all of a sudden they show a
chimney while the couple is making love, or when someone is being killed the
camera pans out and you hear a gunshot. Violence is real. It is and will always
be part of life, part of all animal species. So here we were going to portray a
rape and I think it needed to be shot in real time to convey the weight of this
situation. I think the reason why people, and men especially, found the scene
so difficult, is that all of a sudden we identify with Monica, with her
character, and it's hard to identify with a victim. I don't think there's any way
to identify with the rapist, at least to this day no one I've ever spoken to has.
And as for identifying with the victim, I naturally chose the bias of
portraying the perspective of Alex, Monica's character, by keeping the camera
on the ground. Now we are stuck just like she is. We shot this scene six times
over two days, three times each day, allowing Monica and Jo Prestia breaks of
two hours or two hours and a half between each take. Because it was so
emotionally charged both they and the crew needed breaks. So many people have
commented on the length of this scene, but I felt it was necessary. A rape
rarely takes place in less than nine minutes. I wanted the length of the
sequence to be realistic, and as long as Jo and especially Monica were willing
to keep the scene that long I felt the impact on the viewers would be much more
intense. Also, as a director I had to accept what they wanted to shoot, so I
would say that this sequence is more the result of Monica's directing than mine
because she was holding the cards and could tell me, 'I want to stop. I won't
do this or that.' I told her to tell me if there was a problem. I think Monica
was extremely daring for having taken this scene so far, given her position in
French and international cinema, and I think Jo Prestia was also daring for
playing such a monstrous character. It took more courage on their part than it
did for me to film it. I'm totally amazed by their performance.
On Marcus and Alex's love scene
I think this sequence in particular wouldn't have
worked without Vincent and Monica because we feel that they love each other,
that their movements are natural, that there's a level of familiarity with each
other's body. I don't see how Vincent could have played this scene with another
actress or Monica with another actor. There are certain things one can and
cannot lie about when you are two or three feet away from the camera. I believe
there are ways of kissing in movies that are true and other ways that are
false. Almost all kisses that have no emotional impact on set are extremely
obvious on the screen. I think they were happy. Once they stopped being nervous
because they were naked and because it's rather intimate appearing in the nude
with someone you actually sleep with, and once they were calmed by the results
on video and they viewed the takes shot on Steadicam, they were reassured. As a
result the energy level rose throughout the day, so at the end of the day we
got this result. We re-shot the sequence the next day, but strangely enough it
became a little more repetitive than the first day. Obviously, they both have
such beautiful bodies a lot of viewers said, "I don't know whether to fall in
love with Vincent or Monica." I think the viewer also has a sense of being
rewarded in this scene. If we had to endure everything we did, at least we made
it here because there's more to the universe than what we've seen until now. I
think that if the film consisted only of the first half it wouldn't have been
of any interest, and maybe showing this sequence by itself without the rest would
have made it float in a sort of cloud of peace. Reality is a lot more
animalistic than what we pretend it is, and the second half is a counterweight
to the first.
Bits and Pieces
I think I stole the idea to change the title four
times from Tarkovsky's The Mirror where, if I'm not mistaken, the title
appeared normally and then in reverse.
This is probably the most experimental section of the
film but also the least tedious. Often, the more complicated or visual
something is the less tedious it is. Narrative parts quickly become boring,
especially on second watching. It's usually the more incomprehensible movies
that I watch the most often on DVD.
There I am, also dressed for the part. It's difficult
to get an erection. I wanted very badly to have a hard-on during the take, but
with the assistant cameraman and the whole crew there I realised how difficult
it was, so I have a lot of respect for those who can get hard-ons on
command.
Many people misunderstood and thought the rapist is
killed at the beginning of the movie. That's not at all what happens; it's his
friend who gets killed. I guess about one in five people mistakenly think they
kill the rapist.
As for the lighting in the whole film, we didn't use
any floodlights whatsoever, only high-voltage bulbs and natural lighting. I
find that in movies with floodlighting you can detect it 99% of the time, which
makes what you see less believable. Makeup, as well, makes the actors less
believable, so we didn't use any makeup either throughout the whole
movie.
Tenia means tapeworm and I almost used it as the title
for my last film I Stand Alone because I felt it complemented the title Carne
pretty well. But since I didn't use Tenia as the title of I Stand Alone, I
brought it back as the name of the rapist.
The rest of the movie is happier. The nightmare is
over. And in fact a lot of people leave the theatre before this sequence, so
when I was able to introduce the film I would tell people to stay to the end
because this movie is like being dirtied for 30 minutes and then getting a
shower. You're better off staying for the shower because otherwise you'll leave
feeling dirty.
What Vincent will be sniffing is not cocaine. It's not
sugar but some substance that has no effect whatsoever, and the straw even had
a little filter. What was strange was that because there were a lot of extras
who were drunk, they would go into the bathroom between takes and when they saw
the glucose or flour of whatever, they thought it was coke and they wanted to
take some. They would take the straw with the filter and not understand why it
wouldn't work.
Final Thoughts
It's often the nicest people that make the scariest
movies. People always wonder how I can make this type of film, being as
soft-spoken and smiley as I am. If you meet someone like Cronenberg, you'll
find he is very polite and civilised. Actually, I think that making movies or
literary works that are extreme or radical is a sort of outlet for very civilised
people. I'm sure Pierre Molinier, the photographer, must have been incredibly
civilised, the same for Pasolini, the man who did Salò. Often it's the
directors of mainstream comedies who are the scariest people in real
life.