10 WTF Moments In Film You Won't Believe They Got Away With

5. The Least Subtle Oedipal Resolution In The History Of The World

The Film: Only God Forgives If you read my Cannes review of Nicholas Winding Refn's vengeance flick with a difference, you'll know I wasn't best pleased with it, or with being sold a film by the trailer that Refn clearly had no intention of ever making. We should have known he would rail against the commercial success of Drive, but there was no need to go so extreme, and make a film with no entertaining qualities at all. Unlike some of the other films on this list, this one wasn't a matter for the censors - as Refn spends the entire film attempting to push the boundaries of common decency, and making a point about the juxtaposition of almost pornographic visuals with jarring, overly-gorey violence, in what appears to be a conscious provocation of their principles. Instead, the question here is how he got away with it without an audience storm-out. The film was famously booed on the Croisette, and prompted many critics who weren't there to throw their toys down in disgust at the audacity of such a response (it was wholly warranted, I assure you) but the almost final scene, in which Ryan Gosling's near-mute Julian realises his Oedipal infatuation with his mother in the most ridiculous way, and with the subtlety of a house-brick, should have prompted more than the groans it did. Audiences obviously cannot affect how a film turns out, in most cases, but the fact that that scene didn't cost the film any points in some of the more praiseworthy reviews is just baffling.