Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel play a couple whose ordinary Paris night is shattered by a brutal assault, told in reverse chronological order so that the horrifying violence of the film's opening is only fully understood as the more tender relationship it destroyed is gradually revealed. Director Gaspar Noé constructs the film with unbroken, disorienting long takes and a deliberately nauseating early sequence designed to provoke visceral, physical discomfort in the audience. Its unflinching nine-minute assault sequence sparked walkouts and fierce controversy at its Cannes premiere. The reverse structure ultimately transforms the film into an argument about the fragility of happiness, ending, in chronological terms, on a scene of genuine tenderness.