CANNES, France: Gaspar Noe angered a lot of people in Cannes in 2002 with a shockingly violent rape scene in his film "Irreversible." Now he'''s now with a movie called "Enter The Void" which is replete with explicit sex and an aborted foetus.

One of the most striking shots was filmed with a camera apparently placed inside a vagina to observe the thrusts of what on screen became a giant penis. And there was a horrific car crash sequence that was shown several times. The whole thing was meant to be like a drug trip and, for me at least, it worked.

But I was troubled throughout the screening I attended on Friday.

Not by the sex or the violence or the foetus (although that was admittedly unsettling), but at the thought that two small children were in the audience and being subjected to what could quite possibly scar them for life.

The kids in question were the two children who played the main characters in flashbacks to their childhood. I saw the two young actors walk into the gala screening along with the director and other cast members. And then I saw them at the end, standing next to the adult actors bowing after the audience applause.

My God, I thought, can these people really have let the kids watch this stuff? When I got back to the AFP office at the festival I shared my amazement with colleagues, who were also stunned at the idea. But then another colleague who'd been at the screening put our minds at rest. She'd seen the kids being escorted out before the film began and then being brought back in for the curtain call. Phew!

Earlier, Rory Mulholland wrote: I was in the snazzy Hotel Martinez for an interview with the director Sam Raimi, who's best known now for his three "Spider-Man" blockbusters but who's in Cannes to present a horror flick called "Drag Me To Hell."

Raimi's press people ushered myself and two French journalists into a suite in which the charming Raimi awaited us. We had been allotted just ten minutes so we got stuck into the questions about the new movie. But after about five minutes, one of the French journalists, from the Nice Matin regional paper, dropped a bombshell. Have you heard, Mr Raimi, that Lucy Gordon has been found hanged in her flat in Paris?

Gordon is a British actress who played the role of a reporter in "Spider-Man 3." Raimi's jaw dropped. No, he hadn't heard. "Oh my God. I feel terrible for the family. What a tragedy," he managed to say. After which a very awkward silence descended on the room.

How does one get back to questions about a horror film after an announcement like that? After what seemed like an eternity, I mumbled my commiserations and then ploughed ahead with another query about "Drag Me to Hell."