Drive Director Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon Causes Cannes Walkouts

It appears that Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s new movie ‘The Neon Demon’ is causing quite the kerfuffle at Cannes.

At a screening of the new movie yesterday, which stars Elle Fanning as a wannabe teenage model and Jena Malone as fashion business make-up artist, critics were treated to themes of horror, murder, sex and necrophilia in the 'Drive’ director’s twisted take on the fashion industry.

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And according to reports, it caused walkouts and even some attendees to shout abuse at the screen.

However, it also brought with it applause from some critics, Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph, while noting the movie’s 'jaw-dropping depravity’, gifting it a full five-star review.

Sadly, this is not the first time that an audience at Cannes has berated Refn.

His equally divisive movie 'Only God Forgives’ was also met with a 'chorus of boos’ in 2013.

But he find himself in some rarified company, not least the new Kristen Stewart movie 'Personal Shopper’, which was also booed earlier this week.

Remarkably, considering the reverence in which it is now held, Scorsese’s 'Taxi Driver’ was jeered in 1976, over its violence, nihilism and Robert De Niro’s troublesome anti-hero.

Similarly, though it’s now considered a masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘L'Avventura’ was also booed at its premiere at the festival in 1960.

Such was the reaction, Antonioni felt it necessary to rush the movie’s star, Monica Vitti, from the theatre for fear of reprisals.

And though it won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at Cannes, Quentin Tarantino’s 'Pulp Fiction’ was booed when Tarantino was presented with his gong, because some thought that director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s final film 'Three Colors: Red’ should have won instead.

Back in 2003, Vincent Gallo’s 'The Brown Bunny’ was also terribly received, the veteran critic Roger Ebert calling it 'one of the most disastrous screenings I had ever attended’.

Its reception was so bad that Gallo vowed that he would never make another film again, though he returned to filmmaking in 2010.

In 2009, Lars Von Trier’s 'Antichrist’ was both laughed at and booed – surely a first – with the movie being given an 'anti-award’ by its Ecumenical Jury, for 'the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world’.

Though highly respected in the movie business, Terrence Malick was jeered in 2011 over his sprawling, contemplative 'The Tree of Life’.

The jeers, however, were met with so-called 'counter-applause’ by its fans, and like 'Pulp Fiction’, it was awarded the Palme d'Or in the end.

Image credits: Gaumont Film Company/Rex Features/Nordisk