The French actor tipped to win an Oscar for his role in The Artist was under fire at home today for a poster showing him holding a woman's legs in the air under the line "I'm going into a meeting."
France's advertising regulator ARPP asked that the posters of Jean Dujardin --
advertising the film Les Infideles (The Players) -- be removed from billboards in Paris because they depicted women as sexual objects.
The ARPP said it received four complaints from the public offended by the ads, another of which shows co-star Gilles Lellouche with a woman who appears to be performing oral sex on him.
The offending poster showed Dujardin, who is in the running for best actor Oscar this month for his star role in The Artist, a silent black and white movie, holding the bare legs of a woman, his head between her high-heeled feet.
The Players is a series of sketches from different directors including Dujardin himself and Michel Hazanavicius, the director of The Artist, that take a comic look at the theme of male infidelity.
The posters, which went on display on Monday, will be removed tomorrow, said the ARPP head Stephane Martin, who added that they "propagate an image of women that damages their dignity."