Louis Fauquembergue / FDCThis week the unthinkable occurred: An audience full of members of the press audibly booed Kristen Stewart's new movie at the Cannes Film Festival.
But while this may seem uncultured, over-the-top and so very un-French-like—after all, who actually boos anywhere but at a sporting event?—the Cote d'Azur film fest actually has a long history of awkward flops. Perhaps it's something about all that fresh air, blue sky and salt water, but attendees are historically very uninhibited. Even much-loved actors who can seemingly do no wrong, like the great Ryan Gosling, have been booed at Cannes.
What's even more amusing is that jeers from the audience don't even always mean that your movie sucks. Ironically, Stewarts Personal Shopper received some overwhelmingly positive reviews in the midst of those thumbs downs. Others have gone on to find financing or even (gasp!) box office success. It's simply that Cannes festival-goers have almost come to expect to boo movies, looking forward to the tradition as much as all the free croissants.
Let's journey back, shall we?
Taxi Driver, 1976
We told you this was a long history. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro's violent, vulgar and curse-filled classic wasn't always so classic, and it elicited an altogether different kind of booing—it came not during the screening, but at the awards ceremony. The flick won the top prize, the Palm d'Or, and fans were not happy about it. Clearly the joke was on them, because we all know how that movie's legacy has played out.
Pulp Fiction, 1994
Yes, seriously, Pulp Fiction! The cult classic also won the Palm d'Or and festival goers felt robbed. Robbed! Apparently they all thought it should have gone to Three Colors: Red, a movie that absolutely no one remembers. Bravo, booers.
Irreversible, 2002
We see you one audience boo, and raise you a mass walkout. This is perhaps the greatest tool at a Cannes attendee's disposal, and they used it in droves when they were forced to endure this movie about avenging a rape victim. Roger Ebert even called it "a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable," so it's not hard to imagine why it was hard to sit through.
The Da Vinci Code, 2006
What say you, Cannes audience? You don't unequivocally love Tom Hanks? Sheer blasphemy, we thinks. The thriller opened the festivities and was met by what bystanders described as "incredulous laughter." Audience members did, however, admit to feeling a sense of camaraderie at all lambasting the flick together, so at least there's that. (In addition to the giant box office success it later found, of course).
Inglorious Basterds, 2009
Perhaps Cannes-goers are terrified of Quentin Tarantino? Because after initial reports of widespread booing after the Brad Pitt starrer, people started mysteriously denying that they ever occurred. We smells a Cannes-piracy!
Antichrist, 2009
This movie's boos were also accompanied by exclamations of shock and audible gasps, which is understandable once you learn that Lars von Trier filled it with all sorts of visual horrors that we can't even name here. It followed a couple who are recovering (unsuccessfully, we might add) from the accidental death of a child, and doing so by basically mutilating each other and hallucinating all sorts of crazy things. Film festival folklore even has it that a member of the press fainted during a later screening.
Lost River, 2014
We apologize to you, Ryan Gosling, for you have been sorely disrespected by the Cannes public. The actor flexed his muscles as a director and the French were not having his dark fantasy about the crumbling of Detroit. We can only imagine that if Gosling himself had stood on the stage to face their boos, reactions would have been demonstrably different.
The Captive, 2014
This was not a good year for The Ryans. In this case, it was Reynolds who received the audible boos, for his turn in this indie about the kidnapping of a little girl. That's right, not even watching Ryan Reynolds play a Hot Dad will salve the Cannes audience members.
Grace of Monaco, 2014
A fictionalized biopic about Grace Kelly's life starring Nicole Kidman? What could go wrong? Well...everything. It was the opening night premiere that year, and it was rough. The flick basically spun the life of a royal as full of hardship and sacrifice, and the country of Monaco as one full of rich, spoiled, vapid people. Needless to say, reception wasn't great—on top of the boos, there was audible laughter ringing out during the press screening. And it's not a comedy.
Sea of Trees, 2015
Even Cannes darling Gus Van Sant (he of Milk and Good Will Hunting fame) is subject to the will of the crowd. Last year he brought his Matthew McConaughey-fronted flick about a widowed man's visit to a Japanese suicide forest to the fest, and as rollicking as a good time as that sounds, it didn't please. Variety even described the trouncing as a "chorus of boos." How fun and musical!