POSTERS FOR A NEW French film starring the Oscar-nominated Jean Dujardin have been taken down after just four days in France after the country’s self-regulating advertising body voiced its concerns.

French newspaper Le Parisien wrote yesterday that because “America doesn’t kid at all with these kind of dirty photos”, the posters could dissuade Oscar judges from awarding Dujardin the best actor award.

The racy posters feature the main male stars of new film Les Infideles in a range of suggestive poses with faceless women. The film involves a series of sketches examining the theme of infidelity.

In one of the posters (pictured above), Dujardin, who won a Golden Globe and is Oscar-nominated for his lead role in the hit silent film The Artist, is shown standing between a pair of bare women’s legs, holding the calves. In another, the back of a woman’s head is pictured waist-high to actor Gilles Lellouche as he says into a phone: “It’s going to cut off. I’m going into a tunnel.”

Stephane Martin of France’s Authority of Professional Regulation of Advertising said the film’s advertising campaign didn’t respect advertising guidelines “with the sexually explicit positions” and “the play on words” in the posters’ captions.

The advertising company which ran the posters, JC Decaux (which also provides funding for the DublinBikes Scheme) has conceded the posters weren’t in good taste and said they would all be removed yesterday.

The company also said in a statement that it had “refused other visuals for this film that seemed unpublishable to us”. It did not provide further details on those images.

- Additional reporting by Susan Ryan

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