Strong sexual violence, graphic violence. Strong sexual violence, graphic violence. STRONG VIOLENCE, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.

Reviews in this booklet are meant to draw you along to see the film. However, I feel it is my moral duty to highlight the reasons above for which the film got its R rating. This film has two of the most violent scenes I've ever seen, and is not for everyone - at the cinema, I counted five people walking out!

That said, Irreversible is a film worth experiencing. I am also supposed to give a brief synopsis in this review, but this is a film best seen knowing as little as possible about the plot and narrative structure. Of the film's many interpretations, the main point I feel the director was making was "How much are you prepared to watch?" Not just the graphic scenes either - there are a couple of sequences that border on headache-inducing, and one which approaches tedium - it's like the director, Gaspar Noe, is daring us to stay.

This is not a movie you can say you enjoyed, but, like Russian Ark, it has a feeling of originality that will be examined by film students in the future. If you think you can cope with the violence, it is well worth seeing.

Feminist filmmaking doesn't get more hard-core than the movies of French director Catherine Breillat. The Film Group ballot paper synopsis said "unpleasant people have unpleasant graphic sex with one another to prove that men and women are unpleasant to each other", and that probably sums up the movie better than I can.

Basically our unnamed heroine (Casar) first encounters her unnamed, golden-haired partner (Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi - whose acting is not as wooden as his alternate career might suggest) shortly after she slits her wrists in the men's room of a Paris disco. She ends up making him an unusual proposition: She'll pay him a lot of money if he'll spend four evenings at her isolated seaside chateau simply watching her where "she's unwatchable". He finally accepts the offer but their sessions involve much more than he bargains.

A movie that opens with an explicit shot of oral sex outside a gay bar is probably not for everyone and the film deliberately contains sexual scenes many people will find offensive or upsetting, but if you're feeling open-minded and a little adventurous, this is a bold exploration of the gender gap.