This film’s NC-17 rating shows we still see queer sex as unsuitable for mainstream consumption

Last month, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) gave out director Ira Sachs’s new film Passages an NC-17 rating. As noted by the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the rating, NC-17 was created in 1990 to differentiate between pornography and mainstream films “made for adult sensibilities.”

According to the MPA’s Classification and Ratings rules, last updated in 2020, films given an NC-17 rating are those that “in the view of the Rating Board, most parents would consider patently too adult for their children 17 and under.”

Related:

Out director Ira Sachs slams his new queer film’s NC-17 rating, calling the MPA “anti-gay”

“It’s really about a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous.”

“An NC-17 rating can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children,” the MPA states.

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Children 17 and younger cannot be admitted to screenings of films with an NC-17 rating, even with a parent or guardian. However, the MPA states that the rating “should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense,” and that the rating does not mean that a film is “‘obscene’ or ‘pornographic’ in the common or legal meaning of those words.”

But film distributors often try to avoid the rating, likely due to the perceived impact it can have on a film’s commercial viability. Filmmakers have been known to recut movies given an NC-17 rating in order to receive an R rating instead.

Sachs and Passages’ distributor Mubi have roundly rejected that option, as well as the MPA’s rating, opting instead to release the film uncut and unrated. In comments evoking the nationwide efforts by conservatives to ban LGBTQ+ books from schools and public libraries and to censor discussions of LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms, Sachs called the MPA’s rating “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.” He described the MPA as “a select group of people who have a certain bent, which seems anti-gay, anti-progress, anti-sex.”

Other notable LGBTQ+ films that have received an NC-17 rating include Bent, the 1997 film adaptation of Martin Sherman’s play, and director Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2013 film Blue is the Warmest Color.

Set in Paris, Passages depicts the fall-out of a messy, complicated love triangle that develops between a married gay couple (Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski) and a woman (Adèle Exarchapoulos). Tomas (Rogowski) is a volatile, narcissistic film director whose marriage to the infinitely more level-headed Martin (Whishaw) seems to already be on the rocks at the start of the film. After Matin leaves Tomas at his film’s wrap party one night, Tomas spends the night with Agathe (Exarchapoulos, in a quietly captivating performance).

Tomas admits his indiscretion to Matin the next day, explaining that it was more than just a one-night stand; it made him feel things he hasn’t felt in a long time. It was “exciting, something different.” He continues to sleep with Agathe on the side, and comes to believe he is falling in love with her. He and Martin soon separate; Tomas moves in with Agathe, while Martin becomes involved with Ahmad (Erwan Kepoa Falé), an author who is a stable, mature contrast to Tomas.

Tomas, of course, becomes jealous of Ahmad, and is continuously drawn back to Martin. They begin sleeping together again, and when Agathe becomes pregnant, Tomas convinces his two lovers to enter into a polyamorous relationship of sorts — an arrangement that comes at an immense emotional cost for both Agathe and Martin.

Sachs described the film to the L.A. Times as “very open about the place of sexual experience in our lives.” And sex is indeed integral to the film. Passages is not so much a story about sexual exploration or Tomas’s shifting sexual identity as it is about how he uses sexuality to manipulate those around him. It’s an extension of his need to be the center of attention, to feel in control, to create the kind of turmoil in which he seems most comfortable.  

In a statement, Mubi argued that the MPA’s NC-17 rating “suggests the film’s depiction of sex is explicit or gratuitous, which it is not.” I agree that the film’s sex scenes are not gratuitous. They’re honest and artfully shot. But reasonable people can disagree on what is “explicit,” as they can disagree on what is appropriate for people of different ages to see on screen or read about in books.

The depictions of nudity in Passages are not graphic. They are tastefully shot, nearly always obscured or fleeting. Neither would I call the film’s sex scenes “graphic.” This is not Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs,vor Gaspar Noe’s Love, or John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus. The sex scenes in Passages are, however, “explicit” in the sense that it is uncommonly clear what is meant to be happening in them — even if we are not shown what certain body parts are meant to be doing.

One scene, in particular, stands out. Martin and Tomas are in bed together; it is clear they are naked, though we see little of Rogowski’s body and none of Whishaw’s that wouldn’t be seen in a mainstream R-rated film. But the placement of Rogowski’s legs, the way Whishaw moves, the way Rogowski reaches with his hands for certain parts of Whishaw’s body, all make it clear exactly what is happening. It is perhaps the most authentic depiction of the way gay men have sex that I have seen in a mainstream film, and according to the L.A. Times, it was central to the MPA’s rating.

I can’t say how the MPA determines what “most parents would consider too strong” for children 17 and under to view, nor am I arguing that Passages is appropriate viewing for children. But I do think it’s telling that the film’s depiction of gay sex is what reportedly earned the film an NC-17 rating.

Passages does not depict “aberrational behavior”— unless, of course, you count Tomas’s near sociopathic disregard for the feelings of the people who love him. Its depictions of sexuality are neither pornographic nor obscene. But despite what the MPA’s rules say, that’s more or less what an NC-17 rating conveys: That the realities of sex between two men, implied though not explicitly shown, are somehow indecent. That queer sex—and by extension queer people—is unsuitable for mainstream consumption.