Rewind 15 minutes earlier. We see Marcus, his friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel), and Marcus’s girlfriend, Alex (Monica Bellucci), leaving a party. They argue. Marcus is coked-up and belligerent. Alex leaves alone, walking home through an underpass. Here lies the film’s most notorious sequence: a continuous, unflinching, 12-minute take in which Alex is brutally raped and beaten by Le Tenia. The camera does not cut away. It watches, helpless, as the audience is forced into the role of voyeur.

Twenty-two years later, the "Irreversible 2002 movie" remains the most brilliant, brutal reminder of that truth ever committed to celluloid. Approach at your own risk. Time is up. The fire alarm is ringing.

Rewind further. We see the couple in bed, happy and tender. We see Alex reading a book about parallel universes—a direct clue from Noé that for every violent timeline, there existed a peaceful one. Finally, we arrive at the film's only beautiful moment: Alex lounging in a sun-drenched park, pregnant with Marcus’s child, discussing the nature of time and regret.

It is not a film to be watched alone late at night. It is a film to be watched with caution, with context, and with the understanding that when it is over, you cannot reverse time. You cannot un-see what you have seen. And that, ironically, is exactly the point.

We begin at the end: a police light show over a trashed gay S&M club called "The Rectum." The camera, drunken and nauseous, reveals a bleeding, vengeful man named Marcus (Vincent Cassel) whose arm has been shattered. He is searching for a pimp named "Le Tenia" (Jo Prestia). The brutal, righteous violence we witness—including the infamous fire extinguisher murder—is the climax of the plot, but the opening of the film.

Critics note that despite the "message," Noé still filmed Monica Bellucci nude for 12 minutes. He still designed a gore effect for a skull being caved in. There is an argument that the film’s shock value is its value—that without the infamy, Irreversible would be a boring student film about a couple arguing in an apartment. Furthermore, the film has been accused of homophobia (the villain is a gay pimp in an S&M club, though the club’s patrons ultimately help the protagonists).

Critics were divided. Some called it "a movie so violent and repellent it should be destroyed." Others, like Roger Ebert, called it "a movie with such power and purity that you have to respect it." Ebert famously wrote, “It is so violent and cruel that most people will not be able to watch it. But I could not walk out. It is a film of extraordinary skill and shocking power.”