'Lust, Caution' Earns an NC-17 and Keeps It!

Nice to see a studio with balls

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Thursday, August 23rd 2007 at 7:39 PM

After I saw the trailer for Ang Lee's Lust, Caution I was instantly excited to see it. It was a delicate trailer with quite a sinister theme and the balance between the light and dark was fantastic and I only expect the film to be just as good, if not better, based on the fact that it is an Ang Lee film. Now, Variety is reporting that the feature has earned an NC-17 rating, and Focus Features has accepted it!

This is not normal. Not by a long shot considering they can't promote the film using TV spots, some newspapers restrict the advertising and some theaters explicitly say they won't play any NC-17 rated films. What is the highest grossing NC-17 rated film of all-time? That would be Showgirls at $20.3 million, but this doesn't seem like it could possibly be a play for box-office glory considering the film is also 100-percent spoken in Mandarin and isn't the $128 million action fare Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was.

Why is it rated NC-17? We will have to wait until next week for the exact reasoning from the MPAA (look for our MPAA update on Wednesday), but Variety says the production notes compare it to the sexually explicit Last Tango in Paris, whcih earned an X rating in 1973 and aN NC-17 when released on homevideo.

Focus must really be impressed by the film and must expect a lot of Oscar buzz considering they screened the final cut for the MPAA late Wednesday afternoon and accepted the rating the same day. Focus CEO James Schamus calls it "a masterpiece about and for grown-ups!" That's all I need to hear.

I for one can't wait to see it.