Director: Lars von Trier

Bedfellows: Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Troels Lyby, Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis

The film

The second official effort of the Dogme 95 movement, Von Trier’s impish provocation tells the story of a woman named Karen who, eager to escape from her life, falls in with a group of able-bodied adults who pretend to be mentally handicapped in public.

The sex scene

In the ultimate show of commitment to their characters, the Idiots retreat to their house in the suburbs of Denmark and launch into a haphazard orgy, all while still pretending to be handicapped (they refer to the performance as “spazzing”). Karen isn’t explicitly involved in the action, but the rest of her newfound pals are a jumble of naked bodies on the living-room floor, erect penises poking out in all directions as the men and women groan and shake with fake palsies.

Why is it so groundbreaking?

Planting the seed that would flower as Nymphomaniac 16 years later, The Idiots was the first time Von Trier depicted an erect penis onscreen, and the first time he spliced in stunt genitals to give the illusion that his cast was engaging in unsimulated sex (there’s only one shot of penetration and the faces of both performers are hidden from view). But it was Von Trier’s decision to co-opt the characteristics of the disabled that ultimately proved most controversial—regardless of your opinion on the ethics of the project, The Idiots was proof that the director would stop at nothing to get a rise out of his audience (and his cast).—David Ehrlich