News: Lust, Caution To Be Rated NC-17

According to Variety, Focus Features has accepted an NC-17 rating for the upcoming Ang Lee drama Lust, Caution. Set in WWII China, the film tells the story of a young woman (Tang Wei) who is recruited to seduce and then assassinate a Japanese collaborator (Tony Leung). Lee is best known for helming Oscar winning films such as Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, making Lust, Caution a prime contender for next year's big awards race. A lot of things will come into question when the film opens in September. The American NC-17 rating, handed down by the MPAA for films it deems too inappropriate to be seen by children under the age of 17, has been so villainized in recent years that most major film chains (AMC, Regal) and rental stores (Blockbuster) won't even carry films with the rating. These films are also ineligible for television and newspaper ads as well. Focus is making the highly respectable, but potentially dangerous move of accepting a rating that could kill their biggest chance for a hit this winter. It's much more common for a studio to demand that a director recut their work to earn a more marketable R rating. This problem has caused many public flareups in the past between popular directors and their studios and was one of the primary subjects of the 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It's an issue that pits art against commerce and to the dismay of all film lovers, commerce almost always wins out. "As with so many of his previous films, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee has crafted a masterpiece about and for grown-ups," said James Schamus, Focus CEO and Lust, Caution co-writer. As if I didn't love the studio already for its persistent support of artistic films, including some true modern classics such as Lost In Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I'm rooting for it more than ever now that it's made such a bold defense of artistry at potentially grave financial costs. It's my greatest hope that Focus and Lust, Caution persevere and perhaps help eradicate the growing, illogical NC-17 stigma. As far as I know, there hasn't been a film of this high a priority and artistic pedigree to be theatrically released as NC-17 since Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education in 2004, which frankly never stood the chance to crossover the way that Ang Lee's films tend to. This could very well cripple the film and its chances for success and awards recognition, but it could also open the floodgates for paranoid studios to give their creative talent true artistic freedom.

To see the Lust, Caution trailer go here.