The Grand Palais theater on the French Riviera was the scene of a brawl Wednesday night as hundreds of eager moviegoers jockeyed to get into the Cannes premiere of Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noe’s latest project, the 3D arthouse porn film Love.
According to the Daily Mail, the crowd outside the theater was so large that many attendees with valid tickets were turned away and arguments broke out amongst the hundreds who had showed up to try to get in.
Noe’s Love follows a young couple’s sexual affair and reportedly features real, non-simulated sex, close-ups of genitalia, group sex and a transvestite prostitute, all filmed in 3D. The posters for the film caused a stir when they were released last month.
“For years, I have dreamed of making a film that would fully reproduce the passion of a young couple in love, in all its physical and emotional excesses,” Noe said in a statement before the film’s premiere. “Of all my films, this one is closest to what I have been able to know of existence, and also the most melancholic. And it gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to share this short tunnel of joys and ecstasies, accidents and mistakes.”
Noe has courted controversy at the world’s premiere film festival before; in 2o02, ambulances were called to the Cannes screening of the filmmaker’s Irreversible after several audience members became ill while viewing the film’s extended, graphic rape scene.
Love reportedly received a standing ovation after its first screening Wednesday night, but reactions to the film were mixed on Twitter.
“Like bad sex, [it] seems to go on forever with no climax or pleasure in sight,” wrote Little White Lies movie critic Sophie Kaufman.
“Just Gaspar Noe badly sketching a sour relationship. And the sex scenes get boring after a while,” added Sight and Sound magazine critic Isabel Stevens.
One attendee who saw the film Wednesday night told the Mail that it was more “conservative” than she had anticipated.
“It was very conservative to be honest,” the unnamed moviegoer said. “Lots of penis shots, but no vagina close-ups. Particularly for this filmmaker who is known for pushing the envelope, it was pretty tame stuff and also pretty heteronormative. I was expecting it to be more experimental and kinky. Bit of a let down.”
Noe shouldn’t be discouraged by his film’s mixed reception; Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds were both booed by audiences at their Cannes premieres, and Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver went on to four Academy Award nominations despite taking flack when it won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, in 1976.
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