Gay Film ‘Passages’ Gets Slapped With An NC-17 Rating
This move is dangerous for “a culture which is already battling...the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist,” said director Ira Sachs.
In a move that harkens back to the 1950s while simultaneously echoing the ongoing censorship of depictions of LGBTQ identity nationwide, the Motion Picture Association has given the upcoming queer film Passages an NC-17 rating.
“We hunger for movies that are in any proximity to our own experience,” director Ira Sachs told Los Angeles Times, “and to find a movie like this, which is then shut out, is, to me, depressing and reactionary.”
To be sure, the Sundance drama is quite sensual — it centers on a Parisian love triangle between a movie director (Franz Rogowski), his artist husband (Ben Whishaw), and a teacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
And yes, it has its fair share of sex and nudity — including a two-minute scene of the two husbands shot in a single take. But none of the scenes are particularly indelicate or over-the-top, the film’s distributor MUBI said in a statement.
For Sachs, the rating is “a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling, in such extreme ways, the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist.”
“MUBI has officially rejected this NC-17 rating,” the film’s distributor said, per Variety. “MUBI remains committed to releasing Passages nationwide in its original version as the filmmaker intended, with our full backing, unrated and uncut.”
Passages will be released unrated in select theaters, with a wider rollout to follow, Deadline reported.
Directors sometimes make cuts to get the NC-17 rating down to an R to allow younger teens to see the film in theaters. But for Sachs, “there’s no untangling the film from what it is,” he said. “It is a film that is very open about the place of sexual experience in our lives. And to shift that now would be to create a very different movie.”
The MPA was previously criticized for giving the drama Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating due to one scene in which Ryan Gosling’s character performs oral sex on Michelle Williams’ character. The film was ultimately released with an R rating after its distributor, The Weinstein Company, aggressively fought it. Sachs has no plans to follow suit.
The Blue Valentine scandal is just one example of the MPA coming under fire for deeming certain depictions of sexuality inappropriate: in that case, women, and — in the case of Blue Is The Warmest Color and now Passages, which both star Exarchopoulos — LGBTQ people.
Regarding the MPA board, Sachs said, “We’re talking about a select group of people who have a certain bent, which seems anti-gay, anti-progress, anti-sex — a lot of things which I’m not.”
Passages will be released in theaters, unrated, on August 4. Watch the trailer below.
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