BLUE VALENTINE Hit With An NC-17 Rating.

It's time to overhaul the MPAA or, at the very least, hold a series of open, public meetings and debates into the criteria used when applying ratings to films. Because in a year marked by a series of questionable ratings decisions they've just made one of the strangest, hitting Cannes, Sundance and Toronto selected drama Blue Valentine with an NC-17, reportedly for a sex scene which contains scarcely any nudity and no violence at all.

The decision making process at the MPAA is muddy at the best of times but the decisions lately seem to be more arbitrary than usual and driven by a sort of moralistic and political agenda that really should have no bearing on how films are rated and what is made available to the public. If nothing else these sorts of decisions are going to make producers skittish about producing any sort of film with any edge at all, with any sort of sensibility intended for consumption by anyone other than teenage kids in the American midwest. And nothing against teenaged Bible Belt kids - I was one, after all - but they're not the only people in the world and their stories aren't the only ones worth telling. By all accounts the sex scene in question is uncomfortable with being exploitative or cruel in any way. And you know what? Sometimes sex between consenting adults is like that and there really shouldn't be restrictions against portraying it as such.