Cannes: 14 Controversial Films That Made Audiences Literally Boo

Thanks to its risqué posters, Gaspar Noé's racy drama about the relationships between a man and two women was the talk of the festival before it even premiered. While some critics contend that it's the director's tamest film, it does feature 3-D sex scenes, so do with that what you will.

Two years after director Nicolas Winding Refn won the best director award for his crime drama Drive, he debuted a second collaboration with Ryan Gosling at Cannes. The aggressively violent nature of the film caused some audience members to boo and walk out of the theater in the middle of the movie. Not all critics agree that it's a mess, but the movie went home empty-handed.

Lars von Trier's experimental horror film created quite a stir with critics thanks to its disturbing portrayal of sex between a grieving couple, played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Among many graphic scenes, the film, called misogynistic by many critics, shows genital self-mutilation and bloody ejaculation. Gainsbourg won best actress, while von Trier returned in 2011 only to have his new film, Melancholia, overshadowed by his own comments about being a Nazi sympathizer. Shortly after, he was declared "persona non grata" by the festival's organizers.

Like horror movies? Even you might find it hard to get through Martyrs, which elicited very mixed reactions when it screened at Cannes. The movie depicts eye-popping violence and shocking torture methods, and eventually — spoiler alert — it ends with someone getting skinned alive and positioned like Christ on the cross. You can imagine how that went over.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell was inspired by real-life sex parties that took place in New York in the early 2000s when he wrote this controversial film. It features a large cast of sexually adventurous characters with a wide array of preferences, which wouldn't exactly be a huge deal if the sex in the film isn't real — but it is. The unsimulated sex caused some critics to categorize it as porn, but Mitchell defended his work, saying that he has "de-eroticized the sex to see what's left over."

In 2004, Michael Moore's political film became the first documentary to win the Palme d'Or since 1956. Despite the award (given by Jury President Quentin Tarantino) and the ridiculously long standing ovation after its screening, some critics complained that the prize was awarded based on Moore's political views rather than cinematic achievement.

You may have heard of The Brown Bunny. It is, indeed, the movie in which Chloë Sevigny gives real oral sex to director/star Vincent Gallo. At the time the movie was filmed, Sevigny said she and Gallo were dating in real life, which he has since denied. Sevigny was dropped by her agency after the film screened, since they were concerned her career would be forever tainted. (Twelve years later, it seems like she's doing pretty well.) Roger Ebert called the film the worst movie in the history of the festival, though later he said he was being hyperbolic.

You wouldn't think a movie about the pop music scene in the UK during the '70s, '80s, and '90s would be especially shocking, but it earns a place on this list thanks to the way it was publicized. The film's actors pelted each other with fake stuffed pigeons on the beach near a restaurant. Diners thought they were real pigeons, and all hell broke loose. The PR stunt was inspired by the time the British singers on whom the film is based were imprisoned for poisoning 3,000 pigeons in one day. Supposedly Joel and Ethan Coen were at a table, and they were highly amused by the whole situation.

This psychosexual thriller by David Cronenberg (not to be confused with the 2004 Oscar winner) elicited boos and very mixed reviews thanks to the graphic sex and violence it portrays. Based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name, the plot involves characters who become sexually aroused by car crashes. The sentiment didn't translate to the big screen, and audiences were turned off. While The New York Times' reviewer said the film deserved to be taken seriously, she also called it "disturbing" and "creepy."

Quentin Tarantino's film was up against the highly lauded Three Colors: Red for the Palme d'Or, and critics balked when Pulp Fiction walked away with the prize. Though the film wasn't booed at its screening, Tarantino claimed his prize from Jury President Clint Eastwood to a chorus of boos, most from those who expected Krzysztof Kieslowski's final film in his Colors trilogy would be a shoo-in for the big win.

Wild at Heart is another Palme d'Or winner that had audiences divided. Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage played lovers on the run who encounter a bloody car-wreck victim and a psychotic robber (Willem Dafoe, who just can't shy away from controversy) who blows his own head off. The movie was directed by David Lynch, and audiences were audibly upset at the film's violent sequences.

The controversy surrounding Do the Right Thing actually had little to do with the content of the film. Critics loved it — Roger Ebert gave it four stars and said that it "comes closer to reflecting the current state of race relations in America than any other movie of our time" — but Jury President Wim Wenders bypassed the film and awarded the Palme d'Or to Sex, Lies, and Videotape. His reasoning was that the film's main character, Mookie, was "unheroic." Director Spike Lee didn't take kindly to the criticism, saying, "I've got a Louisville Slugger at home with Wim Wenders' name on it."

Though Cannes has seen its fair share of movies with antiheroes, something about Robert De Niro's mentally unstable Vietnam vet Travis Bickle was especially upsetting to audiences. The seedy New York-set film features a bloody climax that had festivalgoers bickering about its questionable moral message. Martin Scorsese won the Palm d'Or for the film, but he didn't hear the audience booing him because he was busy filming New York, New York with De Niro.

Though it's now thought of as a classic, Federico Fellini's masterpiece was condemned by the Catholic Church for portraying characters with such loose morals. The jury disagreed and awarded it the Palme d'Or, and the controversy only served to fuel the buzz around the film. It went on to earn an Oscar and solidified Fellini's status as one of the most important directors of his generation.