Infamously, English critic Mark Kermode got thrown out of the screening at the Cannes film festival for loudly heckling the film and yelling "il est merde!" at the screen on multiple occasions (French for the vulgar critique, "this is shit").
The second film in Lars von Trier's "Golden Heart" trilogy in which the heroines remain naïve despite their actions. The two other parts are Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000).
Written in four days as part of the Dogma 95 Manifesto.
Asked about the orgy scene, Anne Louise Hassing said, "Nude scenes aren't particularly fun. Lars made it easier because he came in one day, undressed down to his socks, and said we're going to be nude today and if you don't do it now, you're going to think about that scene all the time and won't be able to relax. But things were tense anyway because it was very odd. The first day we shot just actors together, without, uh, the real thing, and the next day the porno stand-ins came and it was very uncomfortable. We just had to be in the frame while the stand-ins were doing their stuff. Lars did this scene to be true to this spassing thing. If we didn't show that, he wouldn't have it all. And it's true to Dogme because the scene shows the real thing, with no artificial light to make it look beautiful."
During filming, the takes were often 50 minutes at a time which meant the shooting of four or five scenes together in very long sequences.