Ang Lee's new film wrestles NC-17 rating

Ang Lee

Ang Lee’s new movie Lust, Caution, which opened in New York on Friday, has ignited a controversy over its explicit sex scenes and NC-17 rating. The rating can be a kiss of death at the box office, and stores like Blockbuster and Wal-Mart won't carry these films on DVD.

“The NC-17 rating has long been the movie industry’s equivalent of the scarlet letter,” said Lorenza Muñoz in the Los Angeles Times. If anyone can change that, it’s Ang Lee. His "stereotype-busting" Brokeback Mountain—about gay cowboys—“shattered Hollywood convention” and gained Lee a best-director Oscar. Lust, Caution has already “opened briskly in Hong Kong and Taiwan.” If it does well in the States, maybe Hollywood won’t “shy away” from the NC-17 label anymore. After all, “in the late 1960s and ’70s, major directors such as John Schlesinger, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, and Bertolucci made X-rated movies with big name actors including Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss and Lynn Redgrave.”

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