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Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated several times since.

Deserved or not, French cinema has a reputation for being a little racy. From classics like “Belle de Jour” to controversial modern films like “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” French film has consistently pushed the boundaries of sexuality and sensuality onscreen. So it’s perhaps no surprise that the country’s premier film festival Cannes is such an oasis for sexually explicit films, ones that have frequently generated controversy over its history — especially when these films feature unsimulated sexual acts.

Unsimulated sex onscreen at Cannes dates back to at least 1973, when the film “Thriller — a Cruel Picture,” featuring several acts of hardcore unsimulated porn, played at the festival. In the years afterwards, particularly provocative and avant-garde works like “Sweet Movie” and “The Idiots” caused shock at Cannes by presenting audiences with real, unvarnished sexual content.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in February 2022 and has been updated multiple times since.]

Sex on film is nothing new, and yet unsimulated intercourse in non-pornographic movies has raised eyebrows and drawn eyeballs for decades. From Vincent Gallo’s controversial directing for “The Brown Bunny” to Robert Pattinson’s masturbatory method acting in “Little Ashes,” genuine intimate encounters captured on film — however staged they may be — can pull audiences into the bigger stories their writers and directors are trying to tell.

Catherine Breillat’s first film in 1976, “A Real Young Girl,” adapts her own controversial novel about a 14-year-old exploring her newfound sexuality. Breillat’s later work, 1999’s “Romance,” tells the story of a woman desperately seeking human connection and featured similar scenes, including sadomasochistic sex play.

“Actors are prostitutes because they’re asked to play other feelings,” Breillat told IndieWire. “This prostitution is not profane; it’s a sacred act that we give them.”

John Cameron Mitchell set out to “honor” sex as a pastime for real people,...

Harmony Korine has been openly bored with movies as we know them since the first time that he directed one. Real ’90s kids remember when he went on “Late Show with David Letterman” to promote “Gummo,” and insisted to the befuddled host that “things need to change. We can make films differently.” Korine may not have been wrong on either score back in 1997, but he’s a hell of a lot more right today. We live in a time when Hollywood offerings have become more stale than ever, and traditional cinema is beset on all sides by new technologies, novel coronaviruses, and — in Korine’s case — even some of the same artists who’ve helped to push the medium forward over the last several decades.

And, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with that. The movies wouldn’t exist if not for the 19th century visionaries who recognized that photography...

Mektoub My Love: Canto Due

Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2019 Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo which premiered in comp at Cannes to divisive responses and widespread critical consternation. Nevertheless, as the title of his past two Mektoub films would indicate, we have always been destined for a Mektoub My Love: Canto Due. While Intermezzo waits for its theatrical premiere in France, potentially a different, edited version of what was seen at Cannes (the film apparently circulated on bootleg DVDs amongst the North-African population in France), conversations suggest Kechiche’s third chapter in the ongoing Mektoub saga is already in the can.…...

The International Cinephile Society is known for going its own way with its annual awards, and its latest edition is no exception. Leading the field for its 17th awards was Pedro Almodóvar’s semi-autobiographical “Pain and Glory,” which won best picture, and best actor for Antonio Banderas.

The Ics is made up of more than 100 accredited journalists, film scholars, historians and other industry professionals. Led by Ics president Cédric Succivalli, each year the Ics honors the finest in American and international cinema.

Best director went to Céline Sciamma for her 18th-century story of obsession “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” while the film’s Adèle Haenel earned the supporting actress prize.

Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” – which is up for six Oscars this weekend – was another hot Ics favorite, winning original screenplay, ensemble and production design awards.

Vitalina Varela won the lead actress prize for her role as a Cape...

Céline Sciamma and Abdellatif Kechiche both arrived at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival with new films, but the reception to “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” could not have been more different. While Sciamma’s “Portrait” was hailed as a masterpiece and one of the festival’s best achievements, Kechiche’s “Mektoub” was derided as a new rock bottom for the Palme d’Or winner behind “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Both films became calling cards for the highs and lows of a filmmaker’s gaze. Critics championed the female gaze of “Portrait,” while Kechiche’s male gaze became a point of controversy just as it did before on the first “Mektoub” film and “Blue.”

In a new interview with France’s So Film magazine, Sciamma defends Kechiche’s male gaze and calls out both film critics and moviegoers for creating a cinema in which the...

Never a stranger to controversy, “Fat Girl” director Catherine Breillat made some provocative remarks during a recent Variety interview in the lead-up to her new role as Locarno Film Festival jury chief. The interview runs the gamut of topics, with Breillat touching on everything from Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche to disgraced #MeToo crusader Asia Argento, with whom Breillat worked on 2007’s “The Last Mistress.”

Breillat said she feels that Kechiche, whose 2019 Cannes film “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” appalled audiences with its graphic and some say misogynistic depictions of sex and nudity, overdid it with the sex scenes in 2013’s Nc-17-rated lesbian romance “Blue Is the Warmest Color.”

“Well, I do think Kechiche spent way too long shooting that sex scene. He shot it over two weeks, whereas I would have done it in a day,” Breillait said. “You can’t put actresses in that position for 15 days. I’ve...

Filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche is no stranger to critical acclaim…and controversy. The director’s career has been consistently appreciated by film fans and critics alike, earning him numerous awards, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2013. But throughout his almost 20-year career, Kechiche has also seen disparaging reports about his on-set and off-set activities. And so it shouldn’t be any surprise that the filmmaker’s latest work, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” which premiered at this year’s Cannes, now finds itself with yet another controversy for Kechiche.

Continue reading ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’ Director Accused Of Plying Actors With Alcohol Until They Performed Unsimulated Sex In New Cannes Film at The Playlist.

The initial outcry about Abdellatif Kechiche’s film “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” had mainly addressed its artistic merits (or lack thereof) for including a nearly 15-minute scene of unsimulated oral sex and and a seemingly never-ending parade of butts. But a report from a French paper is alleging that Kechiche had to employ unorthodox methods to convince his unwilling actors to perform the oral sex scene.

“Intermezzo” is the sequel to “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at Venice back in 2017. Both films, based on François Bégaudeau’s novel “La Blessure, la vraie,” feature Ophélie (Ophélie Bau) and Amin (Shaïn Boumédine) at the center of a complicated web of attraction and affairs.

In the scene in question, a man performs consensual oral sex on the character Ophélie. The Midi Libre posted an account Saturday morning from a person close to production who says that Kechiche had to push his actors to create that scene.

For the second year in a row, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival has gone to an Asian film about a close-knit family of con artists. A year after Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters” won the 2018 award, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s jury gave this year’s top prize to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” one of the most critically acclaimed films of this year’s festival.

In his review on TheWrap, Ben Croll called the film “a genre-bending dark comedy with searing class consciousness” and labeled it a return to form for the director whose last two films were the English-language “Snowpiercer” and “Okja.”

The Grand Prix, the jury’s second place award, went to the first black woman director ever in the Cannes competition, Mati Diop, for “Atlantics.”

Also Read: 'Parasite' Film Review: Bong Joon-ho Tackles Disparity With Delicious Dark Comedy

Antonio Banderas won the...

The female ass is the main character of “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” and that’s not an exaggeration. After auctioning off the Palme d’Or statuette he won for “Blue Is the Warmest Color” in order to finance this film, director Abdellatif Kechiche returns with — judging by its title — the second installment in a godforsaken trilogy. The rumors are true: “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” clocks in at around four hours, each hour more excruciatingly mind-numbing than the last.

Continue reading ‘Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo’: Abdellatif Kechiche’s Torturous, Four-Hour Sequel Is the Butt of the Joke [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

As the say, nature abhors a vacuum.

So once it became clear that longtime Cannes stalwart Woody Allen probably wouldn’t be turning up on the red carpet anytime soon, you knew that someone would eventually come around to fill that void.

Lo and behold, someone has. A particular someone named Justine Triet, whose volatile dramedy “Sibyl” was the final film to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday night.

Also Read: 'Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo' Film Review: Abdellatif Kechiche Trolls Cannes With Nsfw Excess

Only, in a convention-defying move that speaks to the director’s larger intent, Triet cribs from Allen’s least beloved period; instead of drawing from those “early, funny films,” this story of a psychiatrist who becomes unhealthily involved with her patient draws a straight line to darker Allen films like “September” and “Another Woman.”

Triet has apparently cited the latter film as a direct reference,...

Abdellatif Kechiche’s controversial “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” has given Cannes 2019 its biggest critical bomb. The movie debuted in competition May 23 and caused walkouts because of a nearly 15-minute oral sex scene that shocked audiences. Now “Mektoub” has launched on Rotten Tomatoes with a rare 0% score from eight critics. Rotten Tomatoes posts initial scores after five reviews have been submitted (one of which has to be from a top critic).

IndieWire’s senior film critic David Ehrlich gave “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” a C- review out of Cannes, calling it a the equivalent of a “cinematic lap dance” and criticizing the director for aggressively fetishizing his female characters. The review called “Mektoub” a new rock bottom for Kechiche’s career.

“Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” is the sequel to Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Other negative reviews have been written by The Guardian...

More than a few festival-goers must have woken up in rough shape after last night’s long trip to the club with Abdellatif Kechiche, and to their credit, the Cannes Film Festival seems to have taken that into account.

Maybe that’s why the festival kicked off its final day of screenings on Friday with so gentle and winning a film as Elia Suleiman’s “It Must Be Heaven.” With his first feature in 10 years, the Palestinian director returns with another exploration of nationality and identity that explores those questions with deadpan humor and poker-faced comic invention.

As in his three previous films, Suleiman takes the lead, playing a version of himself as channeled through the comic personas of Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and, sure, Mr. Bean. Save for one line of dialogue, Suleiman anchors the film as a quiet observer who takes in the absurdities of the world around...

Abdellatif Kechiche is back at the center of Cannes outrage following the world premiere of his latest Palme d’Or contender, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo.” The filmmaker last stirred controversy with his extended sex scenes in “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which took home Cannes’ top honor in 2013. Kechiche’s latest film reportedly includes one prolonged and graphic oral sex scene that is apparently not simulated. The scene lasts for at least 10 minutes, if not closer to 15 minutes. The moment led to outcry from film critics and the first major walkouts at a Cannes 2019 screening.

“The most important thing for me and this is what I want to say right away, was to celebrate life, love, desire, breath, music, the body,” Kechiche said at the Cannes press conference for the movie on Friday morning. “I wanted to try a cinematographic experience that would be as free as possible.”

Kechiche denied...

This coming weekend, the 2019 Cannes Film Festival will hand out its annual awards, capped by the cover Palme d’Or prize. Taking this award can sometimes set a movie off on a path towards Oscar love. To be fair, Academy Award attention is hardly guaranteed when it comes to feted Cannes titles. Still, some early hardware can never hurt a potential contender. With some high profile filmmakers at the festival this year like Pedro Almodovar, Bong Joon-ho, the Dardenne Brothers, Jim Jarmusch, Terrence Malick, and of course, Quentin Tarantino, A-listers could very well end up with some gold before the weekend is out. As a reminder, here is what is in competition this year at the Cannes Film Festival: In Competition “Pain and Glory,” Pedro Almodovar “The Traitor,” Marco Bellocchio “The Wild Goose Lake,” Diao Yinan “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho “Young Ahmed,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne “Oh Mercy!,” Arnaud Desplechin “Atlantique,...

Just when you thought the Cannes Film Festival was winding down, Abdellatif Kechiche drops a bombshell on the Croisette. Thursday night’s premiere inspired outcry and even walkouts over an explicit scene of apparently unsimulated oral sex.

Critics regarded the French-Tunisian director’s latest film “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” as something of a massive troll of his critics. “Mektoub,” a sequel in fact to 2017’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” was a three-and-a-half hour film (cut down from an originally announced four hours) that spends considerable time leering at women, including a 15-minute sequence in which the film’s star performs oral sex on a man in a bathroom. Yes, really.

“It’s the same length as ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ and literally 60% of the movie is close-ups of butts. i had a mild psychotic break at one point,” IndieWire‘s David Ehlrich wrote on Twitter.

Also Read: 'Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo...

Abdellatif Kechiche is once again under the Cannes microscope for prolonged sexual content in his films. The director’s latest competition title, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” premiered at the festival, inspiring largely negative responses from critics, journalists, and audience members alike.

“Intermezzo” is the sequel to “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at Venice back in 2017. Both films, based on François Bégaudeau’s novel “La Blessure, la vraie,” feature Ophélie (Ophélie Bau) and Amin (Shaïn Boumédine) at the center of a complicated web of attraction and affairs.

One scene in question from “Intermezzo” occurs roughly two-thirds of the way through the nearly four-hour film and involves a lengthy, consensual encounter in a bathroom between Ophélie and a man. The scene, which features what appears to be un-simulated oral sex, lasts much longer than the most extensive sex scene in Kechiche’s 2013 film “Blue Is the Warmest Colour.”

That film,...

No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.

Bringing up the rear of this year’s Cannes lineup in more ways than one, Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” — an oft-threatened but completely unsolicited sequel to his 2017 bomb, “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” — devotes about 60% of its runtime to extreme close-ups of jiggling female derrieres. And while that horrifyingly unexaggerated statistic may sound like a bit of a red flag to begin with, it only gets worse when you consider that “Intermezzo” is the same length as “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Of course, none of this is much of a surprise. Not anymore. As shocking as it was when Kechiche celebrated his 2013 Palme d’Or win by pivoting to posteriors, “Canto Uno” made it irrevocably clear the filmmaker has no regrets for the wanton fetishization of nubile flesh that separated “Blue Is the Warmest Color” from his earlier,...

Just when you think you’ve seen it all before, director Abdellatif Kechiche goes and drops something as toxically indulgent as “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” a three-and-half-hour-long provocation that will now make the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” director the most talked-about man on the Croisette once again — and not in a good way.

This essentially narrative-free sequel to 2017’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” takes the already sporadically clothed cast of that previous film, plops them onto a beach for the initial 30 minutes, moves them to a club for the subsequent three hours, leers at every crevice of their bodies along the way and then calls it a day.

Squint hard enough and you can see what he’s going for. Instead of growing the slight narrative seeds he planted with “Canto Uno,” which followed a tight circle of Franco-Algerian young adults over the course of the summer of...

A simple but somehow atypical shot opens Abdellatif Kechiche’s new film: a serene closeup of a young woman’s face, as seen through the camera lens of Amir, a budding photographer still finding his perspective. Her expression is ambiguously tranquil, her long hair lightly rustled by a humid breeze, all softly lit by a sinking afternoon sun. It’s exquisite, the shot as much as the face, and anyone who has seen Kechiche’s last film will wonder how long the director can hold it there. But then there’s movement, and the camera gently drops and twists to close in on a different area, lower, a little lower, and yep, there it is — her toned, unblemished derrière. Welcome to the world of “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” where, with apologies to Samuel Beckett, form is content and content is form: the female form, that is, and its lower half in particular.

Cannes competition entry Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo, the follow-up to Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno from 2017, starts with a quotation from the Quran: “They have eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear.” The passage in question talks about the heedless who deserve to go to hell. To be blunt, sitting through the latest work from the filmmaker behind two bona fide masterpieces of contemporary French cinema — Games of Love and Chance (2003) and Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) — was its own kind of hell. If only ...

In the six years since it first arrived on the scene, the Shoot the Book pitch session has grown in breadth, scope and above all, ambition. A fixture in Cannes since 2014, Shoot the Book has also spread to festivals and markets in Los Angeles, Shanghai and Annecy, but this year will mark its most significant step forward.

While the 11 titles selected for the pitch session offer a more diverse slate than ever before, event organizers will also introduce new components such as an international rendezvous and several master classes, with the intention of turning the sessions, which run from May 20-21 in the Palais’ Salon des Ambassadeurs, into a key destination for producers and publishers alike.

“Three years ago we recognized that if we wanted to offer our event a chance at long-term success, we’d have to open it on an international scale,” says Nathalie Piaskowski, general director of...

Cannes 2019 will be having it’s own Blue Is the Warmest Color reunion or … face-off as Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and now Abdellatif Kechiche will all be featured in the competition. As we had underlined last week, Kechiche was down to the wire (or on the outs) with Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo, so we now find Seydoux in Arnaud Desplechin’s Oh Mercy!, Exarchopoulos in Justine Triet’s Sibyl and a rare “sequel” in contention for the Palme d’Or. Also part of the extended Kechiche family, this second film sees the filmmakers once again work with actors Salim Kechiouche and Hafsia Herzi (she is showcasing her directorial debut in the Critic’s Week section).…...

Abdellatif Kechiche, the Palme d’Or winning director of “Blue is the Warmest Color,” has been accused of sexual assault by an unnamed actress in France.

A preliminary investigation has been launched following a complaint for sexual assault against the filmmaker filed on Oct. 6 by a 29 year-old actress, according to France’s Bfmtv. The alleged aggression took place on June 23 in an apartment located in northern Paris where the actress was having dinner with Kechiche and a friend of his. The actress told the police that she blacked out after having several drinks and woke up on a couch with her pants open while Kechiche was fondling her, according to Bfmtv.

Kechiche, who has categorically denied the allegations through his lawyer Jeremy Assous, is currently shooting the sequel of “Mektoub, my Love: Canto Due” which Pathé is co-producing.

The Franco-Tunisian filmmaker was previously criticized in 2013 by Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos,...