French official creates special rating for banned film

Nearly a year after French censors ignited a firestorm of controversy by giving an X rating to the sex-and-violence-filled film Baise-Moi (Rape Me) — effectively banning it from French movie houses — French culture minister Catherine Tasca has given the film a newly formulated 18 certificate, roughly comparable to an R rating in the U.S. (The film opened without incident — and without a rating — in New York on July 6; a New York Post writer said that it showed “actors engaged in sex so graphic that it leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.”) A year ago, the film’s co-director, Virginie Despentes, who also wrote the book on which the movie is based, told the French daily Le Monde: “As an author, I can’t accept any censorship except that which I impose myself.”