A 3D pornographic arthouse film showing at the Cannes film festival has failed to excite the critics but inspired a standing ovation and even led to fights when it was shown to the public.
Some critics walked out of the screening of Gaspar Noe's offering, Love, on Thursday, apparently unimpressed by the graphic 3D sex scenes which feature penetration, mutual masturbation and a penis ejaculating towards the audience.
Argentine-born, Paris-based filmmaker Noe is perhaps best known for his 2002 Cannes film, Irreversible, in which a violent rape scene featuring Monica Bellucci also prompted mass walkouts.
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His latest effort is a romantic tale about an American film maker recalling a past girlfriend and how their relationship unravelled after a threesome with a neighbour. 3D sex has been used in hardcore pornography before, but this is the thought to be first time it has been used in a film with arthouse ambitions.
The film sparked keen public interest after explicit posters were placed around Cannes, reports the Daily Mail. So many turned up to a late-night screening that there were tussles outside the Grand Palais theatre and dozens of ticket-holders had to be turned away.
Some of the audience who did get in gave the film a standing ovation at the end of the 90 minute screening. But many critics seemed unconvinced by Noe's "blood, sperm and tears" vision.
The Daily Telegraph's Robbie Collin tweeted that Love was "largely hopeless, which is doubly annoying as I've had 'masturpiece' cued up for the last month".
Little White Lies writer Sophie Kauffman wrote on Twitter that Noe's film was "like bad sex", because it "seems to go on forever with no climax or pleasure in sight".
But perhaps the biggest surprise is that the film didn't produce as much controversy as some expected.
Maybe we are just too jaded, suggests Pete Hammond on Deadline Hollywood. "Does nothing shock this fest anymore?" Hammond asks. In the age of the internet anything goes, he says, and scenes of bodily fluids aimed at the audience "didn't even cause a ripple".
"The bigger scandal this year was the security guards kicking women off the red carpet for not wearing heels," says Hammond. "You gotta love this town."
