AFP - The competition at the Berlin Film Festival wrapped up Friday with a thriller by Britain's Michael Winterbottom that drew a hostile reaction for its graphic and sexualised violence against women.

"The Killer Inside Me" stars Casey Affleck as psychopathic Texas sheriff Lou Ford who is torn between two women, played by Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, in the screen adaptation of a 1952 pulp novel by Jim Thompson.

The low-budget neo-noir film, one of 20 pictures vying for the Golden Bear top prize to be awarded Saturday, met with boos at a packed press screening here for lingering on a number of grisly attacks.

Winterbottom, who won the Golden Bear in 2003 for his refugees drama "In This World", fielded more than a half-dozen angry questions on the brutal scenes at a news conference but insisted he was not going for cheap thrills.

"I think anyone watching the film and saying this in some way supports or encourages violence against women is just watching it in a very perverse way," he said.

Winterbottom said he had taken an unflinching look at violence intentionally, to make the audience squirm rather than to entertain it.

"I don't believe anyone could watch or read 'The Killer Inside Me' and think that Lou Ford is a role model, that Lou Ford was a glamorous character that you'd want to be like, that somehow beating up women was a good thing or a heroic thing. In the end he wants to destroy himself."

The 48-year-old Winterbottom is a favourite on the festival circuit for hard-hitting political films such as "A Mighty Heart" starring Angelina Jolie and "The Road to Guantanamo".

He said he had aimed to be as true as possible to the hard-boiled novel by Thompson, who later went on to write screenplays for Stanley Kubrick.

The picture was shot in Oklahoma and told from the warped perspective of the protagonist.

He is sent to tell the prostitute June (Alba) she has to leave town but when she resists and slaps him, he retaliates and both quickly find themselves aroused by the blood and bruises.

They start an affair that ends 20 minutes into the film in an stunning orgy of violence and gore. Many in the audience walked out, dozens of others covered their eyes in horror.

The story then introduces Ford's well-born girlfriend Amy (Hudson), who has a penchant for masochism perfectly suited to her lover's own tastes.

Meanwhile the bodies continue to pile up as suspicion finally centres on the young lawman.

Affleck, 34, had roles in his older brother Ben's films "Good Will Hunting" and "Gone Baby Gone" and was also a fixture in the "Ocean's Eleven" movies but Winterbottom noted he rarely appears as a leading man.

Winterbottom expressed disappointment that Affleck and his lead actresses had not accompanied him to Berlin as agreed ahead of the festival, noting that a small independent film needed their star power to make a splash.

Producer Andrew Easton denied news reports that Alba had skipped the event due to sharp criticism at last month's Sundance Film Festival, where the picture first screened.

"That story is not true," Easton said. "Jessica saw the film before the film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and she really liked it," he said, citing family obligations as the reason for her absence.

The 60th Berlin Film Festival, cinema's first major international showcase of the year, wraps up on Sunday.