Appropriating its air of salacious, transgressive ‘wrongness,’ porn producers started slapping Xs all over their product, despite the fact that the MPAA had nothing to do with them, and were legally allowed to do so because the X, amusingly, had never been copyrighted. While initially, films like “ Midnight Cowboy” had performed solidly despite the X rating, as audiences understood that it was still intended for the general public even if not suitable for children, as time went on that understanding was eroded. Ironically, the NC-17 was introduced by the MPAA to get away from any sort of stigma-it was brought in to replace an X certificate whose real meaning had been confused by the porn industry’s wholehearted embrace of it.

Léa Seydoux: Intimacy Coordinator Couldn’t Help ‘Insane’ ‘Blue Is the Warmest Colour’ Production It carries with it not only the automatic reduction of the potential audience by exactly that segment of the population most likely to go to the theater, but also distribution woes that range from certain cinemas refusing to screen NC-17s, to certain video stores refusing to stock the DVDs. Still, it’s a debate that surrounds the inevitably controversial rating ever since it was introduced to replace the old X certificate, with an NC-17 assessment being regarded by many as, basically, the kiss of box-office death for anything but the most buzzed-about film. For which we heave a sigh of relief, of course: better for us that the film is released, with whatever certification, uncut, than we get some kind of hacked up version that scrapes an R. But unlike many other films in a similar situation, its unassailable position as a near-universally lauded (our own review is here) Cannes Palme d’Or winner has placed the idea of cuts being made for the U.S. So with its super-long and undeniably graphic sex scene, among other explicit moments, “ Blue is the Warmest Color,” which is released this week, was always going to get slapped with an NC-17 rating in the U.S.

Wild at heart 1990 nc 17