20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today

Gaspar Noé was one of the most exciting young directors of the early noughties, so much so that Euro megastar couple Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci were dying to work with him. After turning down the script that would become his erotic art film Love because it was too exposing, the pair instead settled for his ride-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thriller Irreversible – because that is, uhh, far less exposing?

The movie is revealed, scene by scene, in reverse chronology, opening on Cassel’s Marcus and his friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) attacking the patrons of an underground BDSM nightclub, and beating one of them to death with a fire extinguisher. Following their journey back, we learn that they’re hunting the man who r*ped Marcus’ partner Alex (Bellucci) and left her for dead in an underpass – and then we are forced to watch it. Each scene is laden with foreboding, dragging us backwards in time and keeping us on the edge of our seats waiting to see what misery will next befall Noé’s characters.

When Irreversible was screened at Cannes, around 200 people walked out, and critics were divided on whether such a frank depiction of violence and brutality could be justified. Well, today it wouldn’t even be in question. The post-#MeToo film industry would bury this at the script stage (not that there was a huge script to work from), and censors would tear it apart before a nine-minute-long r*pe scene could make it near a cinema screen.