The unusual promise was made in relation to the film Love, a movie featuring lengthy, non-simulated sex scenes in 3D that was booed at the Cannes film festival this year and largely ridiculed by critics.

 

The film, directed by the Franco-Argentinian Gaspar Noé, was initially given an over-16 rating when it was released in French cinemas this summer. 

 

But after a lawsuit by a far-right group, the country’s cinema classification board was forced to change it to an over-18 rating.

 

Minister Pellerin said the far-right group had managed to get the rating changed because “we have rules that state that any film that shows non-simulated sex scenes must be forbidden for under-18s.”

 

(France's Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin. Photo: AFP)

 

“That is going to change,” she told Canal + television. “We are working with the people who classify films to see how we can make things evolve, while respecting the protection of minors.”

 

Pellerin compared the lawsuit against Love to the attacks on the “queen's vagina” sculpture by Anish Kapoor in the gardens of the Chateau of Versailles.

 

“It’s sort of the same problem…, a return to ‘moral order’ and the question of creative freedom,” she told the Petit Journal programme.

 

The director and the producer of Love say their film is a non-pornographic 3D exploration of the beauty of love-making.

 

They have argued that that changing the rating to over-18 was a fresh sign of the increasing influence of the ultra-conservative Catholic hard right in France.

 

The pair have made a legal appeal to the state watchdog, the Conseil d’Etat, to have the rating overturned.

 

Pellerin also announced last week that she too was asking the Conseil d’Etat to revise the rating.