4) Irreversible
Irreversible is great, really really great. Any film about which Roger Ebert called “a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable” can only be great, right? Well, it is. Most of the notoriety that surrounds the film is based on a gruelling ten minute rape scene that happens in the middle, and rightly so – it’s truly horrific, made all the worse for the unwavering camera angle that the director Gasper Noé adopts throughout: a steady long shot that shows you exactly what a rape would look like in real time. It’s a scene that stays with you for the rest of your life.
The rape sequence is the basis of the film, and colours the events that come before and after it, because the scenes are shown in reverse order, like Memento. The film begins in swirling chaos (literally – Noé’s floating cinematography swirls and spins the audience around the action onscreen, never offering a place of stability or comfort) and incredibly brutal violence, becoming more intense as the rape scene approaches and we understand what must have happened. So far, so horrific.
The genius of Irreversible, and ultimately what gives the film its heart and soul, are the scenes that occur after (before) the rape. The relationship between the two leads, Alex (Monica Bellucci) and Marcus (Vincent Cassel) is so passionately, genuinely loving, shot through with warmth and emotion, that what has happened (is about to happen) disturbs us all the more. If Noé wasn’t such a great director, then Irreversible wouldn’t be as horrific as it is.
A real moral quandary of a film, but so worth it.
5) Audition
Most of Takashi Miike’s films could go on this list, but Audition stands out because of its thrilling double whammy of torture both psychological and physical. You could call it a feminist J-horror, if you wanted to boil everything great about it into a glib zeitgeist-y soundbite.
The film concerns an aging widowed film director named Shigeharu Aoyama who, at the behest of a producer friend, holds auditions for a movie that he never intends on making simply to interview young, willing females to potentially take on as a lover. To him it’s the perfect scheme – he can specify the age, height, weight and looks of potential partners without shame or embarrassment. They can then simply announce that the project’s cancelled with a book full of nubile actresses to pick from.
Unfortunately for Shigeharu, the actress he picks, Asami, is a dangerous psychopath. He’s initially attracted to her shy nature, but that serene exterior hides a whole wealth of emotional trauma. Scarred physically and mentally as a youngster, Asami starts a campaign of terror against Shigeharu, which all culminates in Asami’s apartment. This is what the film has been building toward and it is really, really horrible.
The fun of Audition is seeing such a young, innocent, normal-looking woman wreak havoc over a man’s life. She destroys him, just for the fun of it. It’s surprising, and very modern, offering a vision of equality through horror. Takashi Miike’s unique vision rarely leads you astray, and Audition doesn’t change that.
It’s an excellent film, one of the few truly memorable examples of J-horror from the last twenty years. If you were looking for a Western parallel, the closest would probably be i, adapted from the Stephen King novel. It has the same themes of obsessive love and female-to-male torture, but without the fan aspect. Audition dwells more on the psychological effects of Asami’s torture more than Misery does, in which Paul Newman stays more or less compos mentis throughout.
A world cinema classic, but not one to watch over and over again. Or more than once, in fact.
