When it comes to head-turning sexual romps in France, most people are focusing on the pimping trial of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn this week. 

 

Indeed, France hardly seems to bat an eye when it comes to sex.

 

France's Centre Nationale du Cinema et de l'image animée (CNC), which hands out the classifications for films, has proven this once again with its rating of the new erotic blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

See the trailer here:

The film, which was released in France on Wednesday, was classified as an adult film in both the UK and the US (meaning you have to be 18-year-old in the UK and 17 in the US). In Malaysia, the film has been banned because it was deemed sadistic. 

 

But in France, children as young as 12 have been given the green light to see the film at the cinemas after it was given the second-lowest classification possible.

 

Why? 

 

Because it's just not sexy enough, says Jean-Francois Mary, president of France's Board of Film Classification, who said that it was nothing more than a “schmaltzy romance”.

 

Indeed, Facebook follower Shellie Langlois says that France “has yoghurt commercials sexier than this movie” (join the discussion on Facebook here).

 

The film has been almost universally panned by critics, though one website that ranks films by the amount of sex scenes called it the “raunchiest film of the decade”.

 

The movie's director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, told The Guardian newspaper that she didn't want the film to be “graphically explicit”, and it's understood (We haven't seen it)  that the film contains not even a hint of a genital, no orgasms, and not that much sex either. 

 

The film stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, playing two characters in their twenties exploring the world of dominant sex, bondage and sadomasochism. It is based on the best-selling book by the same name.

 

Other “sexy” films to be shrugged off by French classification teams include “Blue is the Warmest Colour” and “Basic Instinct”, both of which were given 12 plus ratings in France, while classed as adult movies in the UK and US.