Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! So many exclamation points. ¡But it's worth exclamating! Tis one of the very best films of 1990.
If you ask me this one never gets enough attention in the Almodóvar oeuvre. It's the MPAA's fault (It's fun to blame things on them. Try it). 'Round about '89/'90 a lot of specialized films were having huge problems with the ratings board. Films like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Henry & June were just too much for the simple "R". Regarding the latter film, I still maintain it was the fully clothed Uma Thurman that did it in with the board. She was unbelievably smoldering in that picture. And you can't really edit a title character out of the picture, can you? In this climate was born the NC-17 rating which is still protecting fragile Americans from ever being subjected to films as permanently scarring to their psyches as....
There are a few violent pictures on the list of films that got slapped with 'the new X' but mostly it's sex that gets them angry enough to outlaw any parent from bringing their teenagers into the theater with them. Meanwhile, it's totally OK for a parent to bring their 5 year old into Saw XIV. "All is right with the world", he typed sarcastically.
The new victim of the NC-17 is... Brüno ???The Wrap reports that the new Sacha Baron Cohen comedy, his follow up to Borat, got slapped with the dread rating. Perhaps reading the full (informal / gifted?) title will make the MPAA's objections more comprehensible.
Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt
The film hasn't even opened yet and Brüno's already achieved his purpose. They're visibly uncomfortable. The comedy, presumably with a few snips, cuts and resultant "R" rating, will open July 10th in theaters everywhere.
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