The controversial Cannes premiere that saw 250 people storm out
The annual Cannes Film Festival is rather well known for the sheer diversity of movies that it screens, inviting controversial arthouse projects to be shown alongside highly-anticipated studio-made flicks. Yet, sometimes, they have arguably given too much creative licence to filmmakers, allowing plenty of divisive movies to be shown at the festival, which have been met with backlash and even mass walkouts.
One of the most notorious of such cases came in 2003 with the release of Brown Bunny by the contentious American director Vincent Gallo. An erotic thriller that tells the story of a motorcycle rider travelling across the country for a race, Gallo’s film obsesses with sexual encounters with random women, with the director, who also stars in the movie, at one point receiving graphic oral from Chloë Sevigny.
At its Cannes premiere, the film received a cacophony of whistles, boos, and even the sound of a cow mooing, with this later resulting in walkouts and a general cry of disgust from the participating audience. So outrageous was the movie that the iconic American critic Roger Ebert went so far as to call it “the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival”.
Yet, somehow, there is a film that comes off worse at Cannes, with a screening of Gaspar Noé’s infamous experimental thriller Irréversible prompting 250 audience members to walk out. Those who remained in the cinema spent the majority of the rest of the screening hurling abuse at the film, with 20 viewers even ending up fainting, thanks to the movie’s brazen approach to violence and rape.
Much of the outcry came as the result of just one shocking scene, an extended ten-minute single shot of a woman being raped in a subway, which many people, to this very day, see as an irresponsible use of the filmmaking medium. Creating a sinister, visceral discomfort, the scene is powerful and provocative, though it’s easy to understand why many thought Noé went too far.
As an old BBC report from the time details, the scene at Cannes sounded chaotic, with fire brigade spokesman Lieutenant Gerard Courtel, who attended the scene, stating: “In 25 years in my job, I’ve never seen this at the Cannes festival… The scenes in this film are unbearable, even for us professionals.”
Noé’s film, which centres on a rape-revenge storyline, might be a tough watch, but there is certainly artistic merit to the Argentine-Italian director’s efforts in creating a film that deals with chaos, tragedy and the destruction of time in equal measure. A disorientating rollercoaster of cinematic experimentation, Irréversible is a frenetic piece of cinema that cares little if you are flung from the ride halfway through.
Check out the trailer for Irréversible below, a film that should be approached carefully before deciding to delve into its world.
