A man being bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher in the Gaspar Noe’s 2002 Irreversible.
Two children being murdered by a sniper.
An un-simulated oral sex scene (to complete ejaculation in close-up) between Chloe Sevigny and Vincent Gallo in he 2003 The Brown Bunny.
Nicole Kidman literally standing above and peeing on Zac Efron’s jellyfish sting–in real time–in The Paperboy.
All of these movie scenes share something in common: They led to boos and walkouts from critics and audience members at the Cannes Film Festival.
Getting booed at Cannes has almost become sort of a ritual, a right of passage for many of the best filmmakers in the world, from Martin Scorsese to David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Terrence Malick, Oliver Assayas and David Cronenberg.
Then, there are likes of Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé, two filmmakers who court controversy and boos whenever they show a new film.
Even films that have won Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or are not immune to audience jeers (see “The Tree of Life,” “Wild at Heart” and more below).
Here are the some of the most controversial films in the festival’s history.
Only God Forgives (2013)
Photo : Everett Collection
Only God Forgives was supposed to be Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling’s celebrated return to Cannes after the breakout success of “Drive,” which won Refn the Cannes best director prize at the 2011 festival.
Anyone hoping that Refn and Gosling’s reunion would yield similar results was surely crushed when the ultra-violent “Only God Forgives” crashed and burned at the 2013 festival.
Gosling plays an American criminal in Bangkok forced to wade through the city’s underworld after his mother tasks him with avenging his brother’s death.
Only the great Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance survived mostly unscathed by the press.
For some, it was a vapid, nihilistic exercise in style, a nasty, hyperviolent thriller set around Bangkok’s seedy brothels and boxing rings,
The film was booed at its press screening, countered as boos often are by defiant shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and scattered applause.
Grace of Monaco (2014)
Photo : Everett Collection
Grace Kelly’s post-Hollywood life may not have been the fairy tale some thought it to be, but you wouldn’t know it from director Olivier Dahan’s cornball melodrama, an exercise in banality.
The Nicole Kidman-starring biographical, which opened the 2014 festival, is widely considered one of the weakest starts in the history of Cannes Fest.
The film earned terrible reviews across the board, with many shrugging it off as poorly-made Oscar bait.
The festival took off and quickly came crashing down to earth on Wednesday with Grace of Monaco, a dreadful Grace Kelly biopic that earned boos and hisses from a rightfully irritated press at the morning screening.
Convention and uninspiring from its first frame to its last, ‘Grace of Monaco’ is a piece of hagiographic fluff that cobbles together tropes from other recent biopics of famous women.
Lost River (2014)
Photo : Everett Collection
What was the movie doing in Cannes?
It was back-to-back Cannes misses for Ryan Gosling, who followed up “Only God Forgives” boos in 2013 with even more boos for his 2014 feature directorial debut “Lost River.”
Gosling’s gonzo directorial debut provided this year’s Cannes Festival with some of its most memorable WTF moments.
After its Tuesday screening, Critics beat a fast path to Twitter to spread vitriol, disbelief about a film partially set in underwater city.
It’s a trippy tale that owes debts to David Lynch and Gosling’s ‘Drive’ director Nicolas Winding Refn–a trainwreck
Sea of Trees (2015)
Photo : Everett Collection
Gus Van Sant’s Sea of Trees was perhaps the biggest flop of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
Van Sant is a Palme d’Or winner and had Matthew McConaughey as his lead, following the actor’s Oscar victory for “Dallas Buyers Club.”
McConaughey stars as an American man who travels to Aokigahara, aka the “Japanese suicide forest,” to end his life, only to meet a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) who’s there to do the same thing.
I Was There:
The film was greeted with a chorus of boos.
McConaunghey stood up for the film at its press conference: “I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be invited. I’m happy that the film got in. It was a great experience for me. I liked the experience of making it, and I’m glad we got the opportunity to introduce it to the world.”
The Neon Demon (2016)
Photo : Everett Collection
Nicolas Winding Refn followed one divisive Cannes premiere (“Only God Forgives”) with another with the 2016 debut of “The Neon Demon,” a fashion industry-set psychological horror starring Elle Fanning as a young model thrown into the corrupt underworld of Hollywood beauty.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Photo : Everett Collection
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” earned strong critical support of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, but that didn’t stop audience members from booing the disturbing feature. As Variety’s Guy Lodge tweeted at the time, “Predictable booing after ‘Killing of a Sacred Deer’ from critics who somehow resent being challenged or chafed at Cannes. It’s magnificent.” The nightmarish film stars Colin Farrell as a surgeon who befriends a young teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) after killing his mother on the operating table. The boy slowly enacts revenge on the surgeon’s family, the matriarch of which is played by Nicole Kidman. Variety film critic Peter Debruge was a fan, writing that “Farrell and Kidman are astonishingly gifted at playing the subtext of every scene.”
Sea of Trees (2015): Cannes Film Fest–Controversial Films–Boos, Walk-Outs, Divisive Response
Movies That Got Boos, Walkouts
A man being bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher in the Gaspar Noe’s 2002 Irreversible.
Two children being murdered by a sniper.
An un-simulated oral sex scene (to complete ejaculation in close-up) between Chloe Sevigny and Vincent Gallo in he 2003 The Brown Bunny.
Nicole Kidman literally standing above and peeing on Zac Efron’s jellyfish sting–in real time–in The Paperboy.
All of these movie scenes share something in common: They led to boos and walkouts from critics and audience members at the Cannes Film Festival.
Getting booed at Cannes has almost become sort of a ritual, a right of passage for many of the best filmmakers in the world, from Martin Scorsese to David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Terrence Malick, Oliver Assayas and David Cronenberg.
Then, there are likes of Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé, two filmmakers who court controversy and boos whenever they show a new film.
Even films that have won Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or are not immune to audience jeers (see “The Tree of Life,” “Wild at Heart” and more below).
Here are the some of the most controversial films in the festival’s history.
Only God Forgives (2013)
Only God Forgives was supposed to be Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling’s celebrated return to Cannes after the breakout success of “Drive,” which won Refn the Cannes best director prize at the 2011 festival.
Anyone hoping that Refn and Gosling’s reunion would yield similar results was surely crushed when the ultra-violent “Only God Forgives” crashed and burned at the 2013 festival.
Gosling plays an American criminal in Bangkok forced to wade through the city’s underworld after his mother tasks him with avenging his brother’s death.
Only the great Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance survived mostly unscathed by the press.
For some, it was a vapid, nihilistic exercise in style, a nasty, hyperviolent thriller set around Bangkok’s seedy brothels and boxing rings,
The film was booed at its press screening, countered as boos often are by defiant shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and scattered applause.
Grace of Monaco (2014)
Grace Kelly’s post-Hollywood life may not have been the fairy tale some thought it to be, but you wouldn’t know it from director Olivier Dahan’s cornball melodrama, an exercise in banality.
The Nicole Kidman-starring biographical, which opened the 2014 festival, is widely considered one of the weakest starts in the history of Cannes Fest.
The film earned terrible reviews across the board, with many shrugging it off as poorly-made Oscar bait.
The festival took off and quickly came crashing down to earth on Wednesday with Grace of Monaco, a dreadful Grace Kelly biopic that earned boos and hisses from a rightfully irritated press at the morning screening.
Convention and uninspiring from its first frame to its last, ‘Grace of Monaco’ is a piece of hagiographic fluff that cobbles together tropes from other recent biopics of famous women.
Lost River (2014)
What was the movie doing in Cannes?
It was back-to-back Cannes misses for Ryan Gosling, who followed up “Only God Forgives” boos in 2013 with even more boos for his 2014 feature directorial debut “Lost River.”
Gosling’s gonzo directorial debut provided this year’s Cannes Festival with some of its most memorable WTF moments.
After its Tuesday screening, Critics beat a fast path to Twitter to spread vitriol, disbelief about a film partially set in underwater city.
It’s a trippy tale that owes debts to David Lynch and Gosling’s ‘Drive’ director Nicolas Winding Refn–a trainwreck
Sea of Trees (2015)
Gus Van Sant’s Sea of Trees was perhaps the biggest flop of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
Van Sant is a Palme d’Or winner and had Matthew McConaughey as his lead, following the actor’s Oscar victory for “Dallas Buyers Club.”
McConaughey stars as an American man who travels to Aokigahara, aka the “Japanese suicide forest,” to end his life, only to meet a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) who’s there to do the same thing.
I Was There:
The film was greeted with a chorus of boos.
McConaunghey stood up for the film at its press conference: “I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be invited. I’m happy that the film got in. It was a great experience for me. I liked the experience of making it, and I’m glad we got the opportunity to introduce it to the world.”
The Neon Demon (2016)
Nicolas Winding Refn followed one divisive Cannes premiere (“Only God Forgives”) with another with the 2016 debut of “The Neon Demon,” a fashion industry-set psychological horror starring Elle Fanning as a young model thrown into the corrupt underworld of Hollywood beauty.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” earned strong critical support of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, but that didn’t stop audience members from booing the disturbing feature. As Variety’s Guy Lodge tweeted at the time, “Predictable booing after ‘Killing of a Sacred Deer’ from critics who somehow resent being challenged or chafed at Cannes. It’s magnificent.” The nightmarish film stars Colin Farrell as a surgeon who befriends a young teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) after killing his mother on the operating table. The boy slowly enacts revenge on the surgeon’s family, the matriarch of which is played by Nicole Kidman. Variety film critic Peter Debruge was a fan, writing that “Farrell and Kidman are astonishingly gifted at playing the subtext of every scene.”