14 DAY TRIAL // Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck have a new film running at the Sundance Film Festival, an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel “The Killer Inside Me,” directed by Michael Winterbottom. The film, which was presented to the audiences the other day, has managed to kick up quite a storm for what some call the gratuitous use of violence against women, as the New York Daily News informs.
In fact, the audience’s reaction to the first screening of the film was so bad that main star Jessica Alba herself got up and walked out. Of course, her rep insists that she had already seen the film (and loved it) and only left because she had a plane to catch, but speculation still persists that she did so in order to avoid being faced with the media in the Q&A after the screening. This left only Winterbottom in the line of fire, as they say.
“The actress slipped out midway through the Sunday premiere of ‘The Killer Inside Me,’ a movie stirring outrage at Sundance for its violence toward women, reports the Toronto Star. ‘Killer’ stars Casey Affleck as a small town Texas sheriff, Lou Ford, who is revealed to be psychotic. He punches and kicks two female characters, played by Alba and Kate Hudson, to a bloody pulp. In the case of Alba’s character, one scene which shows her being graphically beaten goes on for several minutes,” the aforementioned publication says.
“Alba did not return for the Monday screening where the British director, Michael Winterbottom, was confronted by angry audience members demanding to know why it was necessary to show such gratuitous violence toward women. Winterbottom, who appeared shaken by the audience reaction, according to the Star, defended himself by pointing out that the film was based on a 1952 pulp novel by Jim Thompson,” the NY Daily News says.
In following interviews, the director pointed out that no violent scene was used only for the purpose of shocking audiences, as the film stuck with the plot of the novel. It was not reality, Winterbottom is telling the media, but an altered version of reality, since it’s reality seen through the eyes of a demented killer, the Lou Ford character.