Featured Image Credit: Zentropa Entertainments
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Film and TV, Cannes Film Festival, Horror
Emily Puckering
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Film and TV, Cannes Film Festival, Horror
You know a film is going to be pretty damn gruesome when one of the world's biggest film festivals awards it with an 'anti' award.
Yep, this controversial horror actually got awarded with this, and if you've seen it... well, you'll know why.
Starring Spider-Man's Willem Dafoe and Alphonse's Charlotte Gainsbourg, the 2009 film tells the story of a couple who lose their son in an accident and go to a secluded cabin in the woods to reconnect.
Only their experience turns sexual and very violent.
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So violent, in fact, that at one point Gainsbourg's character snips off her own clitoris... so it goes without saying this one really isn't everyone's cup of tea.
And if you think you've heard enough, then I'm sorry to say there's more.
The film in question is Antichrist, and according to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the film is 'clearly adult in theme and tone from the outset, including strong images of real sex, bloody violence, strong gory images, and a scene of self-mutilation'.
But it's true when they say that there's something out there for everyone, and the film managed to make its premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
But it wasn't all positives at the the 2009 festival, as the film - directed by Lars von Trier - was awarded the 'anti' award.
At the time, Radu Mihaileanu - a French filmmaker and head of an international jury at the film festival - said: "We cannot be silent after what that movie does.
"Antichrist is the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world."
However, Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux responded, calling the resolution a 'ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship, (it is) scandalous coming from an 'ecumenical' jury which what is more is headed by a filmmaker' to AFP.
While the film didn't receive any necessarily positive accolades, Gainsborough was named Best Actress in Cannes for Antichrist.
It later emerged that when it came to the intimate scenes, body doubles were used in Dafoe and Gainsborough's place - and this was apparently due to the actor's 'well endowed' manhood.
In an interview, director von Trier claimed that the actor's penis was so 'enormous', it left 'people confused'.
"He [Dafoe] has an enormous d**k. We had to take those scenes out of the film," he said. "We had a stand-in for him because we had to take the scenes out with his own d**k.
"We had to [have a stand-in d**k], because Will’s was too big."
Dafoe himself was asked about this during an interview with The Telegraph, to which he stayed pretty tight-lipped by simply saying: "I always get asked about it in interviews. Interviewers seem obsessed with the subject."