The 68th Cannes Film Festival is well underway and aside from the bizarre high heel controversy, it’s been going pretty well. The famed festival that has been known to debut some of the most beloved films has a pretty impressive list of contenders this year that are all hoping to come out on top, including Cate Blanchett’s Carol, and Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. As much as the festival has the ability to launch films to stardom, it also has the ability to tear them into little confetti-sized pieces of ridicule.
The audiences, ready to boo at a moment’s notice, are very passionate about film and unfortunately for Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees—starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts—they’ve unleashed it all this year by calling the movie annoying and emotionally empty. The painful reaction to The Sea of Trees got us thinking about past Cannes screenings that crashed and burned, some quite deserving of the jeers and others, now seen as masterpieces. After all, Taxi Driver was attacked for its violence and casting of the then-12-year-old Jodie Foster, but went on to win the coveted Palme d’Or.
L'Avventura
L'Avventura (The Adventure) is considered to be one of director Michelangelo Antonioni’s best films, but when it was screened at Cannes in 1960, viewers were less than impressed. Apparently the movie was so poorly received that the filmmaker and star Monica Vitti had to flee the theater. Then after being screened a second time, it did better and went on to win the Jury Prize. L'Avventura is now considered to be a masterpiece and is given credit for changing modern cinema. The film ended up being the first in Antonioni’s trilogy of films that focused on “modernity and its disconnects” and was followed by La Notte in 1961 and L’Eclisse in 1961.
Taxi Driver
Like I said above, the early responses to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in 1976 were less than positive. At the time of its Cannes screening, festival jury president Tennessee Williams criticized it for its violence and moral ambiguity—not to mention the incredibly young Jodi Foster playing a child prostitute. While it may not have been booed, Taxi Driver definitely had a mixed reception, which clearly didn’t set it back at all since it not only won the Palme d’Or, but went on to receive four Oscar nominations and is one of Robert De Niro’s most quoted films.
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola may have won everyone over with Lost in Translation in 2003, but she definitely lost favor at Cannes in 2006 when early screenings of Marie Antoinette were met with booing. Her interpretation of French history, which starred Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, garnered comparisons to Desperate Housewives—which is something you definitely don’t want said about your film. However, the film is now credited with humanizing the famed figure by portraying her as an isolated young girl whom everyone uses and no one understands, which is a common theme running throughout all of Coppola’s projects.
The Da Vinci Code
Trust me, I hate to say this, but Tom Hanks is quite capable of making a terrible film. This 2006 movie directed by Ron Howard and co-starring Audrey Tautou was just awful. Even bad movies tend to get a scattered applause at the end, but apparently this one’s Cannes screening didn’t even get that much. It even went on to earn Ron Howard a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Director.
Inglourious Basterds
In 2009, Cannes viewers weren’t completely taken with Quentin Tarantino’s creative take on WWII history à la Inglourious Basterds. The Guardian even gave it a one-star rating, calling it a “colossal armour-plated turkey from hell” in which Brad Pitt gives the “worst performance of his life.” Harsh words considering it earned eight Oscar nominations, with Christoph Waltz taking home the trophy for Best Supporting Actor.
The Tree of Life
To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain). There’s no denying that it looks and sounds gorgeous, but its meaning got a little muddled and suffered from pretension. When it screened at Cannes in 2011, the film was met with a polarized audience—some booing and some cheering—and critics seemed just as divided. That said, The Tree of Life still managed to win the Palme d’Or, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Not too bad.
Only God Forgives
People had high hopes for Only God Forgives—which surely had something to do with Ryan Gosling—but it turned out being a tough flick for viewers to swallow. From the brilliant mind of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Bronson, and Pusher), the movie’s plot flounders a little and struggles to find footing. Several Cannes viewers booed the film when it screened in 2013, but there were also some standing ovations in the theater. The divided reception isn’t uncommon for the festival and this is a perfect example of a film that you will either love or hate. One critic even posited that had a different director (perhaps David Lynch) made the film, he would have strolled off with the Palm d’Or, suggesting that the negative reactive was unfounded and unfair.
Lost River
Poor, Ryan Gosling. Everyone was pretty pumped to see his directorial debut last year, but critics soon started bashing it—one even called it a “crapocalypse” and “ruin porn.” It’s easy to imagine that perhaps his notoriety and popularity may have had something to do with the reception, since people often want failure, but the overwhelming negativity points to the film just not being very good. Which is a shame considering the long list of top-notch talent, including Christina Hendricks, Matt Smith, Ben Mendelsohn, Saoirse Ronan, and Eva Mendes. Variety’s Justin Chang butchered it, writing, "Had Terrence Malick and David Lynch somehow conceived an artistic love-child together, only to see it get kidnapped, strangled and repeatedly kicked in the face by Nicolas Winding Refn, the results might look and sound something like Lost River, a risible slab of Detroit Gothic that marks an altogether inauspicious writing-directing debut for Ryan Gosling."
Grace of Monaco
Grace of Monaco was chosen to open last year’s Cannes and despite a cast that included Nicole Kidman and Tim Roth (not to mention director Olivier Dahan, who did La Vie en Rose), the biopic was criticized for its selective retelling of history and its soap opera-like qualities. According to BBC, laughter was heard throughout the press screening, which would be fine if the movie was actually meant to be a comedy. Reviews called it boring, stiff, misjudged, and awkward. Ouch. TWC’s Harvy Weinstein quickly jumped ship and cancelled its American release date, landing the film on the Lifetime network.
