Explosive images of sex and violence in films by directors such as Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noe, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier have attracted media attention for the ways in which they seek to shock and provoke the spectator into powerful affective and visceral responses. This first collection of essays devoted to the new extremism in contemporary European cinema critically interrogates this highly contentious body of work and demonstrates that these films and the controversies they engender are indispensable to the critical task of rethinking the terms of spectatorship. Through...