The CNC, France’s film certification board, has come under renewed pressure to review its practices by conservative organisations angry at what they perceive as an overlenient rating given to a Hollywood cartoon.
Sausage Party, written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is an animated fable about the delusion of religion in a godless universe. Set in an American supermarket, its characters are horny and often blasphemous foodstuffs who at one point engage in a mass sex party.
In the US, the film was rated R, and in the UK, it had 15. In France it has been given a 12 certificate, enabling children to legally watch it.
Said Jean-Frédéric Poisson, president of France’s Christian Democratic party: “An orgy scene for 12-year-olds! Everything remains to be done to combat early exposure to pornography.”
La Manif Pour Tours, which has campaigned against same-sex marriage, added on Twitter: “Hello CNC, explain how you can authorise the screening of a giant orgy for the whole family?”
Meanwhile the Association of Catholic Families sought to alert parents to any potential confusion, warning that while Sausage Party gives “the appearance of being intended for young people and children” its “content is not only coarse, but also clearly pornographic, under cover of being ‘politically incorrect’”.
In January, culture minister Audrey Azoulay announced that the CNC was to be overhauled and ratings regulations tightened.
This was in part in response to lobbying by Promouvoir, an organisation purporting to strengthen “Judeo-Christian values”, which scored high-profile victories against films by directors such as Gaspar Noé and Abdellatif Kechiche.
Noé’s film, Love, which contains explicit 3D sex scenes, had its rating raised to an 18 certificate three weeks after release because of the pressure group’s campaign. Kechiche’s Palme d’Or-winning lesbian drama, Blue Is the Warmest Colour, had its 12 rating removed by a Paris court after another Promouvoir appeal, while Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, a psychological horror that includes scenes of genital mutilation, was banned in France, seven years after its release.
The French ratings board has traditionally been more lenient when it comes to sexual content than its UK and US equivalents, the BBFC and MPAA. The 12 rating in France for Fifty Shades of Grey remains in place.
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