Wet Dreamers: the NC-17 rating

This Valentine's Day we salute film, love and unbridled nudity with a look at Oscar winning director Bernardo Bertolucci's (The Last Emperor) homage to sex and cinema, The Dreamers. Set amidst the student riots of the late '60s in Paris, The Dreamers tells the story of an American college student, Matthew, and his relationship with French twins Theo and Isabelle. Slapped with an NC-17 rating for excessive nudity and extreme sexual situations, The Dreamers is the first such feature to achieve theatrical release since Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Orgazmo over five years ago.

The now infamous NC-17 rating first splashed onto the scene in 1990. Universal's Henry & June, "a true adventure more erotic than any fantasy," challenged the way the MPAA looked and thought about ratings. A film that would otherwise have been relegated to obscurity by an X rating was received well by critics, changing the perceptions of what was tasteful and what wasn't worth the effort. So where do we draw the line? What will audiences accept in the name of good film making, and what is just too much? The key to good nudity--and where The Dreamers falls flat on its art house face--lies in its service to a film's plot. Dreamers uses sex as a subject rather than a technique, in exploring the relationship between friends and the taboo of an incestuous brother/sister bond. Take sex out of the film, and there's only the skeleton of a plot.

Nudity and sex can be successful, but when poorly done can kill a movie like little else. You don't need to look much further than the box office to see what audiences will sit through and what just won't fly. The best example of the NC-17-effect can be seen in the notorious film Showgirls, which captured the attention of a national audience and deflowered a Saturday morning legend. Unfortunately, the film didn't even gross half of its $45 million budget. Even Orgazmo, by all measures a bargain to shoot at a measly million bucks, didn't earn back its investment despite opening on ninety-four screens. It's pretty obvious that the odds are stacked against Bertolucci's film, with initial returns in the U.S. being below expectations. The Dreamers' saving grace may be the fact that it is a French film, and let's face it, those perverts will pay to see just about anything (Joke!).