It surprised me to read that, in 2013, Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” was booed at the Venice Film Festival. I don’t remember ever reading that. It turns out it was one of the very rare times that a film was actually booed on the Lido.
In an interview with The Guardian, Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera reminisced about the 2013 screening of “Under the Skin.”
“It was one of the worst screenings I’ve attended; it was the only time the audience booed a film. Scarlett was almost in tears. I tried to say to her: ‘Don’t worry, in time the film will be recognised.’ And that’s exactly what happened. It’s now a cult movie.”
It‘s not just a cult movie. “Under the Skin” was named the 12th best film of the 2010s in our massive critics poll, with over 250 participants, conducted in 2019. And for good reason, the film is pretty close to a masterpiece.
In 2013, I wrote for Awards Daily: “It will polarize people, anger them, frustrate them. Others will get blown away by its vision and call it brilliant and say there hasn't been anything like it […] What Glazer has accomplished here is quite remarkable and will not be forgotten. He's made a picture that defies all conventions and has reinvented a new kind of cinematic language.
I watched “Under the Skin” at the Toronto International Film Festival, only a week after it premiered at Venice. That screening must have had the most walkouts I ever witnessed at TIFF, only eclipsed 6 years later by the catastrophic screening of Claire Denis’ “High Life”, which had more than half of the Roy Thompson Hall vacant by the time the film’s end credits started rolling.
A general rule I have is that if a film gets booed at a film festival then it’s an automatic must-see. If Venice is more polite, Films by the likes of David Lynch, Lars Von Trier, Terrence Malick and Michelangelo Antonioni have been booed at Cannes.
Glazer has actually experienced two of his films being booed at Venice, the other one being 2004’s “Birth.” Other films that received similar treatment at Venice include “Fight Club,” “mother!” “The Fountain,” “To the Wonder,” and “Lust Caution.”