The film director Jean-Luc Godard has joined a growing group of cineastes and performers protesting against the decision by the French state council to classify the film Baise-moi - Fuck me - as pornographic.
The protesters, led by the film's directors, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, gathered outside the Left Bank cinema MK2 Odeon, which has refused to stop screening the film, although it can be legally shown only in specialised cinemas.
The protesters, including the directors Tonie Marshall, Romain Goupil and Claire Denis, were reacting to a decision by the state council to overturn a censorship board ruling that it could be seen by over-16s.
The original decision made it compulsory to display a warning that the film was "an uninterrupted sequence of particularly crude sex and images of particular violence that could profoundly disturb audiences" - a warning which did not mention that the production had been panned by the critics.
It was described as a "bad film" by Le Parisien, as "bad advertising for sex" by Le Point, of "no interest" by Les Echos, and "using ass to sell blood and horror" by the left wing Nouvel Observateur.
But cineastes claimed that the council's decision amounted to a revival of post-war censorship. The X film circuit, which was still profitable 10 years ago, has all but disappeared with the easy availability of home videos. Since then, general release films have become more explicit.
But the question of Baise-moi's content, which was inspired by Ms Despentes's own novel, has been overtaken by anger that the council decision was based on a complaint by an extreme rightwing association, Promouvoir.
The French society of authors, SACD, and the directors' society, SRF, both backed a petition for its general release organised by the director Catherine Breillat, whose own explicit film, Romance, caused a stir last year because of pornographic sequences, but was cleared for general release.
The affair has seriously upset the Socialist-led government and particularly the culture minister, Catherine Tasca, who cleared Baise-moi for the over 16s on the advice of the censorship board, which includes a cross-section of opinion, including church advisers.
She has been accused of allowing the extreme right to control the content of films.
Until it was banned, the film had little success, but the cashier at the MK2 Odeon said there had been a sharp increase in mainly middle-aged filmgoers curious to see what the fuss was about.
"They are extremely embarrassed to ask for tickets for a film with as crude a title as Baise-moi," she said. "They usually mumble, but one couple asked me for tickets to fais-moi l'amour [make love to me]."
