All About the Steamy Love-Triangle Film 'Passages' — and Why Director Rejected Its 'Dangerous' NC-17 Rating

"Passages" is a drama directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ira Sachs and stars Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos

Passages, a new film from acclaimed director Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange, Little Men), is one of the few films to be slapped with an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association's ratings board — but Sachs rejects it.

The steamy drama opens in select theaters this weekend, rolling out unrated after the MPA labeled it with an NC-17, a designation higher than R that prevents anyone under 17 from buying a ticket. (The term replaced the former "X" rating.)

Few movies get the NC-17 stamp — most recently, the controversial Marilyn Monroe movie Blonde earned it — and Sachs rejected the rating and spoke out against it.

"It’s really about a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling in such extreme ways the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist," Sachs told the Los Angeles Times last month.

Set in Paris, Passages is about husbands Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and Martin (Ben Whishaw), whose marriage struggles when Tomas strikes up an affair with a younger woman named Agathe, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, who starred in the 2013 queer drama Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which also got an NC-17 rating.

Related: Ana de Armas Doesn't 'Understand' Why 'Blonde' Got NC-17 Rating When Other Films Are 'Way More Explicit'

A logline for Passages, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, calls it "perceptive, intimate and unashamedly sexy" and touts its "uniquely European sensibility, providing an insightful and authentic take on the complexities, contradictions and cruelties of love and desire."

The film's extended sex scenes likely prompted the MPA to give it an NC-17 rating, but Sachs argued the moments were integral to the story, and he didn't plan on cutting them for a softer rating.

"It would be impossible to separate the film from the sex in the film. Sex is certainly a phrase and a chapter in the film," the director told IndieWire.

Sachs further explained to the LA Times: "Each of the sex scenes to me is a chapter in the film. It has a story. And I wanted each one to have its own relevance and have its own details and be interesting to the audience. I think making interesting sex scenes is the hardest thing."

"What I tried to track here was to not look at sex, but to look at intimacy, not constructed through editing and avoidance," he added.

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The director of another new LGBTQ+ film also spoke about questioning the MPA's decision-making when it comes to non-heterosexual love scenes. Matthew López, whose Red, White & Royal Blue rom-com debuts on Prime Video Aug. 11, told PEOPLE he was "surprised" it got an R rating.

"I think I was a little surprised at the R rating just because, while I never was encouraged to limit what we were showing or limit what I was depicting, the scene is what I intended to show. It plays exactly how I wanted it to play," López said.

"But," he added, "I do question whether or not if it had been a man and a woman, if we'd still gotten an R rating."

In regards to the Passages controversy, an MPA spokesperson told the LA Times, however, "The MPA’s Classification and Rating Administration rates movies based on their content — what happens onscreen and how it is depicted. The sexual orientation of a character or characters is not considered as part of the rating process."

Sachs told IndieWire he's grateful the film's distributor MUBI is "supporting the film as it is" and moving forward unrated.

"This kind of censorship discourages people from making honest work. That’s the problem. The impact is in the residual effects of creating a sense of fear in in artists that they shouldn’t make certain kinds of work if they want to be acceptable. In Spain, this film was rated 12 — 12-year-olds and older are encouraged to go see this film. Unbelievable."

Passages is now playing in select theaters and will go nationwide on Aug. 11, before later becoming available to stream on MUBI.

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