Which filmmaker has caused the most walkouts in Cannes history?
After years of trying to get it made, months of backbreaking work on set and in the editing room, and weeks of exhausting promotional appearances, seeing your film finally screened is a moment to be savoured for any director. That’s why it must be agonising to see an audience walk out of your movie’s premiere, as so often happens at the Cannes Film Festival.
At least, you’d assume so. But not for some directors. The likes of David Cronenberg and Lars von Trier wear Cannes walkouts as a badge of honour. “It doesn’t make me sad,” Cronenberg told Variety in 2022, in reference to people walking out of his film. “It would be very depressing,” he added if no one at Cannes cared enough about what was happening on screen to walk out.
In 2018, von Trier explained to the Guardian that for him, it’s “important not to be loved by everybody because then you’ve failed”. He was actually concerned the audience might not have “hated” his film The House That Jack Built “enough” for his liking.
He need not have worried, though. The movie has gone down in history for causing one of the biggest walkouts from a screening at Cannes of all time. It’s one of two films von Trier has directed to have sent audience members at the festival packing. The other was Antichrist in 2009, which led to around 50 people leaving the cinema during the premiere screening.
Cronenberg, too, is an alumnus of the esteemed and extremely exclusive club of directors who have achieved multiple mass walkouts from screenings of their films at Cannes. His 1996 drama Crash was the first time a Cannes audience had walked out on one of his works, as many displayed their horror and revulsion at some of the film’s characters becoming sexually aroused by car crashes.
The director actually predicted a walkout for his 2022 body horror movie Crimes of the Future, and he wasn’t disappointed. The Cannes audience responded as expected, with many people leaving during the first five minutes of the screening. Some people left during the premiere of his 2014 satire Maps to the Stars as well but were marginalised by the overwhelming majority who stayed, giving the film a standing ovation as it ended.
And the walkout winner is…
Yet neither Cronenberg nor von Trier have had as many walkouts as a certain other director. This director even had audience members at Cannes running for the doors with his directorial debut, such is his walkout-generating expertise.
The director in question is France-based Argentine Gaspar Noé, who has managed to have every single one of his seven feature films screened at Cannes. And no fewer than three of them have caused mass walkouts from the screening. That’s a major walkout percentage of 40%, which is not bad going.
But Noé thinks he can do better. On being told that only six or seven members of the audience walked out of his 2018 horror movie Climax, the director was devastated. “Aw man, no, no, no!” he lamented. “I usually have 25% of the audience walking out.”
He had a lot more than that head for the exits during the screening of his 2002 film Irréversible, which caused probably the most shocking moment in Cannes history. The fire brigade was called in as around 20 audience members fainted, aside from the hundreds who fled the cinema.
His first film, I Stand Alone, a psychological horror movie that involves graphical violence and incest, also saw numerous people walk out of the Cannes screening. And his 2015 erotic drama Love, which includes genuinely pornographic scenes in 3-D, provided a truly in-the-room experience a large proportion of the audience couldn’t bear to sit through.
For a while, it seemed as though Noé’s career was primarily dedicated to achieving as many Cannes walkouts as possible. Cronenberg, meanwhile, saw his latest and possibly last movie, The Shrouds, premiere this week at Cannes to minimal uproar. Von Trier is taking time away from directing and might never have the chance to send dozens of festival punters on their way from one of his screenings again.
If the next generation of shock-seeking filmmakers wants to match or better Noé, they’ll have to show the same dedication to the cause that he’s displayed from the very start of his career.
