Controversial statement, but movies don't have to be about murdering women to be good. To be fair, Matt Dillon's character in The House That Jack Built doesn't exclusively murder women — he murders children too! No matter what the breakdown is, it's disturbing. So disturbing, in fact, that 100 people reportedly walked out of the screening of it Cannes on Monday night, according to Variety's Ramin Setoodeh. In a tweet about the walkouts, Setoodeh claims the psychological horror film, which stars Uma Thurman and Riley Keough alongside Dillon, "depicts the mutilation of women and children," and prompted many in the audience to leave in disgust.
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The film marked the return of director Lars von Trier, who was banned for seven years after making Hitler jokes in 2011. Specifically, he spoke at a press conference about "sympathising with Hitler," which sounds exactly like the kind of person we should be giving a platform to instead of the many women the festival has notoriously ignored.
Listen, if you want to watch a movie about people getting murdered and mutilated, go nuts. But why does gratuitous violence make a film festival-worthy, when so many other films are not? Aren't their female-focused narratives that don't involve sexist gore worth screening?
I'm glad you asked. I've taken the liberty of coming up with a handful of stories that would have not made 100 people walk out of the cinema:
1. Another mother-daughter movie, which are so hot right now.
2. A Dee Rees film about the life of Missy Elliot.
3. A full-length feature documentary about Fiona The Hippo.
4. A Mamma Mia threequel. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again And Also Again.
5. Either one of these movies about an illegal '70s abortion collective.
This is just to get us started — feel free to brainstorm your own in the comments. Maybe in roughly 100 years, Cannes will let us screen them.
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