Walkout at Cannes rape film

Photographers capture Bellucci, who plays a rape victim

CANNES, France -- Stunned guests walked out of a special screening of a controversial film, containing a graphic rape scene, shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Critics have described "Irreversible" as "sick," "gratuitous" and "brutal" and the French national tabloid Aujourd'hui urged readers to boycott the film.

Director Gaspar Noe's film is a sexually explicit and violent film about a drug-crazed man's pursuit of revenge against a pimp he believes to be responsible for raping his girlfriend.

Guests invited to the early Saturday morning screening began walking out of the cinema within 15 minutes of the opening curtain.

Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Todd Rubenstein told Reuters: "It's disturbing and incredibly violent. Not just the graphic violence and the language but the disorienting camera work made my stomach churn."

Pascal Gentil, a Tae Kwon Do medallist for France at the Sydney Olympics, added: "It was too aggressive, too violent.

"When I see a film like that I find it hard to imagine what people must have inside them that they are able to make such a thing. I found it sickening."

The script is littered with expletives directed against homosexuals and women, and a scene in which Italian actress Monica Bellucci is raped lasts 10 minutes.

Noe defended his film by saying people do not have to watch it.

He told a news conference: "If people don't want to see it, that's fine. I have walked out of films too. It's not every day that you want to see this kind of thing.

"I have made a film that I like and that is that. If people want to talk about scandal, that is for them."

"Irreversible" is one of 22 films competing for the coveted Palme d'Or prize at Cannes.