Dear French filmmakers, gay men are not obsessed with killing or raping women. When you do that, it hurts your movie & regardless of what you intend, it IS homophobic. With that said, Irreversible does not commit the sins of Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell, which I hated, for long. First question that the movie asks, “Are there good, bad or neutral deeds?” It soon becomes obvious that there is no such thing as neutral as the film careens chaotically and plunges us into the past in reverse order like Memento. Second question that the movie asks, “Are words/labels, even when accurate, demeaning and capable of hurting people and as violent as physical acts?” The movie answers in the affirmative as words said casually in the past are recognized by the viewer as an oracle for the future. Finally, the constant negative barrage of terms used about women as said by men are contrasted with the reality of women with warm images, steady camera shots and perhaps a bit overkill on the gender role of women as a civilizing force. Even though I hated watching the brutal images for the first half of the film and the homophobic themes should have been substituted with heterosexual male violence, which seems to be a failing in French films, overall, I would not recommend it only because of the graphic nature, but I thought that it was a piercing portrayal of how any type of verbal or physical violence harms oneself and humanizes how no victim was asking for it regardless of dress, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.