Trivia for
Irréversible (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• The rape scene was shot a number of times and the only constraint on the actors, apart from the beginning and end, was that it didn't run over twenty minutes.
  
  
• The blood on Bellucci's face towards the end of the rape scene was added digitally afterwards, as were the smashed-face effects in the club fight scene.
  
  
• The rapist's genitals, seen after the rape, were added digitally.
  
  
• During the party scene shortly after (or before) the rape, when Vincent Cassel is asked his name he replies "Vincent" instead of his character's name, Marcus. He quickly covers this up by saying "just kidding" so that they would not have to reset the long and complicated shot.
  
  
• Newsweek stated that this was the most walked out of movie of the year.
  
  
• Director Gaspar Noé only had a three-page draft before the movie was shot, so all of the dialogue was improvised.
  
  
• The "Rectum" was in fact a genuine gay S&M club in Paris. The crew changed the name, redressed the set and added red lighting. The club was spread across the basements of three separate buildings and was so cavernous and confusing that many of the crewmembers became claustrophobic in it.
  
  
• The underpass in the rape scene was painted red and given a concrete-colored foam-rubber floor.
  
  
• The entire film was shot on Super 16, telecined to high-def video for color tweaking and editing, and then exported to Super 35. For many of the handheld shots, the director used the smallest existing 16mm camera, the Minima.
  
  
• Anywhere from five to fifteen takes of each ten to twenty minute sequence were made, some as short as three minutes and some as long as fifteen. Some takes were assembled using invisible edits disguised with digital post-processing.
  
  
• The first 30 minutes of the film has a background noise with a frequency of 28Hz (low frequency, almost inaudible), similar to the noise produced by an earthquake. In humans, it causes nausea, sickness and vertigo. It was the main cause of people walking out of the theaters during the first part of the film in places like Cannes and San Sebastian. In fact, it was added with the purpose of getting this reaction.
  
  
• The tagline ("Le temps détruit tout" meaning "Time destroys everything") is the first phrase spoken and the last phrase written.
  
  
• Monica Bellucci and Jo Prestia completed six takes of the rape scene over two nights. Bellucci claimed the first take was actually the easiest to do, since on subsequent takes she had a heightened awareness of what was going to happen and had to prevent this from interfering with her characterization.
  
  
• The French DVD release proudly proclaims in the blurb on the back that of 2,400 people at the film's Cannes premiere, 200 walked out.
  
  
• Fearing that he will be labeled homophobic, director Gaspar Noé went back to the Rectum set after the main production was completed and shot a short cameo as the masturbating man.
  
  
• The entire story is told backwards which means that each sequence starts at that moment where the next sequence in the film ends.
  
  
• The book Alex is reading (as shown in the last scene) while she is laying on the grass, is "An Experiment With Time" by J.W. Dunne.
  
  
• Among the albums visible in Alex's record collection is Brainticket's "Cottonwoodhill".
  
  

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