The film too hot for the US censors

Passages: The erotic drama too hot for the US censors SBS productions Focusing on a ménage à trois, acclaimed indie film Passages is out in the US this week – but has already been at the centre of a controversy over its rating. However since the first NC-17 film, Philip Kaufman's Henry and June, was released in the US in October 1990, few mainstream films have followed in its footsteps. An NC-17 rating has traditionally limited a film's distribution, since many theatre owners will not book NC-17 rated films and some media outlets will not cover, or run ads for, them. In 2010, Oscar-nominated US indie Blue Valentine got controversially slapped with an NC-17 for a scene where Ryan Gosling’s character performs oral sex on his wife, played by Michelle Williams, though this was subsequently overturned for an R. In Passages, the film’s most extended sex scene is between the two men, one that is explicit but not titillating, filmed in a long, uninterrupted shot. SBS productions The film's most extended sex scene involves its two leading men, who are shot in one uninterrupted take The raters themselves are shrouded in mystery.