page_title: Irréversible
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Irréversible / Reception
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Monica Bellucci
context_page_description: Irréversible is a 2002 French experimental psychological thriller drama film, written and directed by Gaspar Noé and starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a reverse chronology and follows two men through the streets of Paris as they seek to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend. Much of the film's soundtrack was composed by Thomas Bangalter, one half of the electronic music duo Daft Punk.
  Irréversible competed at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and won the Stockholm International Film Festival's award for best film.
  Irréversible has been associated with a series of films defined as the cinéma du corps, which according to Palmer share affinities with certain avant-garde productions: an attenuated use of narrative, assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair. Irréversible has also been associated with the New French Extremity movement.
context_section_description: The film premiered in France on 22 May 2002 through Mars Distribution. It competed at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2003 through Metro Tartan Distribution, and the United States on 7 March 2003 through Lions Gate Films. Audience reactions to both the rape scene and the murder scene have ranged from appreciation of their artistic merits to leaving the theater in disgust. Newsweek's David Ansen stated that "If outraged viewers (mostly women) at the Cannes Film Festival are any indication, this will be the most walked-out-of movie of 2003." In the same review, Ansen suggested that the film displayed "an adolescent pride in its own ugliness".
  Critical response to the film was divided, with some critics panning the film and others considering it one of the year's best. The film holds an approval rating of 57% based on 122 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.75/10. The website's critics' consensus states: "Though well-filmed, Irréversible feels gratuitous in its extreme violence." The American film critic Roger Ebert argued that the film's structure makes it inherently moral; that by presenting vengeance before the acts that inspire it, we are forced to process the vengeance first, and therefore think more deeply about its implications.
  Irréversible won the top award, the Bronze Horse for best film, at the 2002 Stockholm International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Award by the Film Critics Circle of Australia. It was voted Best Foreign Language Film by the San Diego Film Critics Society, tied with The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares). It grossed $792,200 from theatrical screenings.
  Irréversible received three votes in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films and in 2016 was listed by critic Andreas Borcholte as one of the ten best films since 2000.
caption: Bellucci at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival
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