An almost unwatchable 'lech fest' of a film by one of France's top directors that includes some two and a half hours of twerking and pole dancing was savaged at the Cannes film festival Friday.
Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo consists of 'three-hours-plus of jiggling female butts,' wrote critic Boyd van Hoeij.
Critics laid into director Abdellatif Kechiche - who is being investigated by police for an alleged sexual assault on an actress - for the way his camera drools over the bodies of his female cast and for a 13-minute cunnilingus scene in a nightclub toilet.
Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo consists of 'three-hours-plus of jiggling female butts,' wrote critic Boyd van Hoeij
'It is painfully retrograde and painful to watch,' the Hollywood Reporter declared.
'Oral-sex intermezzo aside, this is basically 'Twerking Female Fannies: The Movie',' said Boyd van Hoeij.
'Sitting through it was its own kind of hell. If only one could unsee and unhear it.'
Variety said that given the sex assault allegation against Kechiche - which he strenuously denies - this 'bloated, petty provocation' may never be released.
Critics laid into director Abdellatif Kechiche (pictured) - who is being investigated by police for an alleged sexual assault on an actress - for the way his camera drools over the bodies of his female cast
Others questioned how it should have been allowed to compete for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, which the Tunisian-born director won in 2013 for 'Blue Is the Warmest Colour'.
The stars of that lesbian love story, Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos, later complained about Kechiche's behaviour towards them on set.
New Zealand producer Patricia Hetherington, one of many who walked out of his new movie's first Cannes screening early Friday, called the film 'the most lascivious leery trash I've seen. Eurgh!
'Talk about objectification and voyeurism.'
Its inclusion in a year when the festival - once the favourite stalking ground of disgraced Hollywood legend Harvey Weinstein - also honoured veteran French actor Alain Delon had already stoked controversy.
#MeToo campaigners launched a petition calling for the award to be withdrawn, branding Delon a violent 'misogynist'.
The actor had earlier admitted to slapping women after his son revealed that he once broke eight of his mother's ribs and her nose twice.
Even some of Kechiche's biggest fans were appalled by the film, the second part of a trilogy set in his childhood home of Sete, a port and resort on France's Mediterranean coast.
David Ehrlich of the Indiewire website called it 'a four-hour movie about butts. Literally 60 percent of the movie is close-ups of butts.
'I had a mild psychotic break(down) at one point,' he tweeted as the curtain came down.
The New York Times wondered if 'you die from twerking for too long? Was there a paramedic on set? The women's stamina is ultimately terrifying.'
British critic Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph tweeted, 'I'm a great admirer of Abdellatif Kechiche's filmography, but... there are now some big buts.'
Kechiche, 58, will face the media at a press conference in Cannes later Friday.
REVEALED: Couple who proposed on Cannes red carpet are a 63-year-old millionaire club owner and his reality TV star girlfriend, 25, who have only been dating for SIX WEEKS
The besotted couple who got engaged on the red carpet in Cannes last night are a millionaire Greek club owner and a Portuguese reality TV star, Mail Online can reveal.
Milos Kant, 63, dropped to one knee in front of banks of photographers and offered a ring to 25-year-old girlfriend Marguerite Aranha, which she gleefully accepted.
The couple have had a whirlwind romance and only began dating on April 15.
It seems they met while she was performing as a topless dancer in The Princess Club in Lucerne, Switzerland, which he co-owns.
Miss Aranha is well-known to Portuguese TV audiences as the winner of the second season of Love on Top, a Love Island-style show where singletons - including members of the public chosen via an app - compete for a prize.
The couple who proposed on the red carpet in Cannes last night are millionaire Greek club owner Milos
