The film was entered into the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. The screening was a fiasco; hundreds walked out, and the remaining audience booed and made catcalls, reportedly bringing Sevigny to tears and prompting a humiliated Gallo to apologize for the film.
The uproar stemmed not only from the film's unconventional, avant-garde style, but from the film's final scene, which features a graphic, unsimulated act of fellatio performed by Sevigny on Gallo. Many audience members found the scene to be inappropriate and left the screening.