Theater Will Ignore NC-17 Rating for 'Blue Is the Warmest Color'

By A.O. Scott
Léa Seydoux, left, and Adèle Exarchopoulos in the film "Blue Is the Warmest Color." Courtesy Sundance Selects, via Associated Press

Abdellatif Kechiche's "Blue Is the Warmest Color," which won the Palme d'Or in Cannes earlier this year, has received a lot of attention — some salacious, some censorious — for its extended and explicit lesbian sex scenes. The film, about a French teenager's relationship with a slightly older woman, is opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday (and in other cities soon after) with an unsurprising NC-17 rating.

This is not a movie that could easily be trimmed to an R, or a case of oversensitivity on the part of the Motion Picture Association of America, whose ratings board issues the classifications. According to the association's Web site, it reserves NC-17 for a film that "most parents would consider patently too adult for their children 17 and under." "Blue Is the Warmest Color" would seem to fit that bill, with roughly 15 minutes of its three-hour running time devoted to the strenuous, nothing-left-to-the-imagination simulated couplings of its lead actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. The recommendation to theater managers is unambiguous: "No children will be admitted."

But that is only, in the end, a recommendation, without legal or contractual force. And at least one theater has decided to flout it. The IFC Center in Greenwich Village — part of the IFC family, which includes Sundance Selects, the label that submitted "Blue" to the ratings board in the first place — will not turn away curious youngsters. In an e-mailed statement, John Vanco, senior vice president and general manager of the IFC Center, wrote: "This is not a movie for young children, but it is our judgment that it is not inappropriate for mature, inquiring teenagers who are looking ahead to the emotional challenges and opportunities that adulthood holds." He announced that "high school age patrons" would be admitted.

In my capacity as a critic, I will weigh in on the artistic merits of Mr. Kechiche's film in Friday's paper. But I am also the parent of two mature, inquiring teenagers, one of whom, my 14-year-old daughter, has seen it twice, at the Telluride Film Festival. My permissiveness has raised some eyebrows among friends and colleagues, and I am not necessarily holding myself up as a role model. You have your own rules, and your own reasons for enforcing them, and naked bodies writhing in ecstasy may not be something you want your kids to see. But in some ways, because of its tone and subject matter, "Blue" is a movie that may be best appreciated by viewers under the NC-17 age cutoff.

It's a movie about a high school student, after all, confronting issues — peer pressure, first love, homework, postgraduate plans — that will be familiar to adolescents and perhaps more exotic to the middle-aged. In spite of linguistic and cultural differences, the main character, moody, self-absorbed and curious, will remind many American girls of themselves, their friends and the heroines of the young adult novels they devour. The content of the film is really no racier that what is found in those books, but our superstition about images designates it as adults-only viewing.

In France, "Blue Is the Warmest Color" has a "12" rating, which means that anyone over that age is permitted to attend. This is the second-least restrictive classification, roughly equivalent to our PG-13. Autre pays, autre moeurs, but in this case I think they have it right.