One of the most anticipated films showing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival debuted today - Only God Forgives, the newest film from Drive team Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling. The film, with the same bloody violence that was spread throughout Drive, earned a mixed response from the audience.
Gosling wasn’t able to make it to the screening. According to The Associated Press, the actor is still busy in Detroit making How To Catch A Monster, his first film as a director. Cannes director Thierry Fremaux read a letter from the actor, who apologized for not making the trip to France.
That left Refn, the director, and Gosling’s co-star Kristen Scott Thomas to talk about the film and its excessive violence. According to The Guardian, the screening of the film had audiences squirming as bodies were dismembered and tortured. One woman got up and yelled “This is shit” as she walked out.
Thomas, who plays Gosling’s character’s mother in the Bangkok-set noir, even said, “Films where this kind of violence happens I don't enjoy watching at all,” adding that as the film was in production “it got more and more despicable.”
Refn, whose Drive won him Best Director at the 2011 festival, explained that being a director is “like a pornographer: it's about what arouses me. Certain things turn me on more than other stuff and I can't suppress that.”
When asked to specifically comment on the violence, Refn explained, “Well, art is an act of violence. It is about penetration, about speaking to our subconscious and our moods at different levels.”
He had to admit that he has “...a fetish for violent emotions and images and I just can't explain where it comes from. But I do believe it's a way to exorcise various things. Let's not forget that humans were created very violent: our body parts are created for violence, it is our instinctual need to survive. But over the years we no longer need violence but we still have an urge from when we are born – which itself can be an act of violence.”
Only God Forgives was screened in competition during the festival. It hits theaters in the U.S. on July 19.
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