Explicit scenes draw NC-17 tag

NEW YORK (AP) -- "Bad Education" has been slapped with an NC-17 rating.
The Pedro Almodovar film features Gael Garcia Bernal ("The Motorcycle Diaries") and Fele Martinez as men who fell in love as Catholic schoolboys, but were driven apart by an abusive, jealous priest.
Sony Pictures Classics appealed the NC-17 rating to the Motion Picture Association of America, but the decision was upheld, MPAA spokeswoman Phuong Yokitis said.
The reason: "explicit sexual content," she said. There are sex scenes between men in the film. Another scene suggests a priest sexually abuses one of the boys, but there's no frontal nudity.
Almodovar, who won a best-original screenplay Oscar in 2002 for "Talk to Her," is somewhat responsible for the creation of the NC-17 rating. In 1990, Miramax sued the MPAA over the X given to Almodovar's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" A court dismissed the case, but the MPAA created the NC-17 rating -- which means no one under 17 can be admitted -- for films that have strong sexual or violent content, but are not outright pornography.
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