Not too many films from North-American friendly directors manage to retain an NC-17 rating by the time they get a domestic release. It looks like the fine folks of good taste over at Focus Features are honoring Ang Lee's final cut of his new film Lust, Caution and releasing it the dreaded "adult" category that often sees newspapers and cinema chains banning the film. The last major release of this type was Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers although the criminally under seen Young Adam and cult favorite Requiem for a Dream were also released against MPAA slicing and dicing (the later just opted not to be rated at all).
Anything that works to break down the silliness of the stigma on NC-17 is a good thing, but it will likely make for an uphill battle for Lust, Caution which already has those dreaded subtitles at the bottom of the frame. They tend to scare away the mainstream audience for which a glossy thriller of this sort may have appeal. Ang Lee of course made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which is one of the most widely seen subtitled films (although there was some dubbed prints of this floating around at the time) in the US if you go by simple box office numbers.
[Source: Reuters via ScreenDaily]
So what's the NC17 for in this case?
Violence? Nudity?
Both?
I would think that it's for the sexual content. The American rating system seems to really hate that stuff. The trailer looks great, though. I'm sure the film will be amazing.
Good for them. Hopefully I'll be able to see it in a theatre within a reasonable distance. Regardless, you got to respect that they're sticking with their picture.
It is more for the lust than the caution :) Apparently there are a lot of provocative sexual positions and whatnot. I'll let you know in a couple weeks, I'm planning on catching it at TIFF.
I was speaking with SF's publicist about it today who said there are sex scenes that go on as long as nearly 10 minutes that--halfway through--he found himself looking away from because they were so explicit. Nearly pornography. He was watching the film with Joan Chen who--not in the scene--leaned over and said, "Pretty calisthenic, eh?"
Can you imagine if Lee had applied this amount of sexual candor to the puptent scene in Brokeback Mountain? Surely the sky would have fallen.
@Michael Guillen,
Calisthenic? As in rythmic exercises? That's pretty funny, actually. I'm a little surprised that the sex scenes are that explicit. That means that it'll be banned in most of China and will have to gain its audience elsewhere. That's a brave move on Ang Lee's part and especially for the studio's side. Such content may mean that it can't be widely advertised and it may pass by without a lot of people knowing that it was already playing in the theatres. It happened to a lot of films that I wanted to see in the past. Thank goodness for good internet film sites.