'They Just Made a Mistake': Blue Valentine Director Derek Cianfrance on the MPAA

Parents around the nation breathed a sigh of relief last week when the MPAA overturned their initial NC-17 certification of Blue Valentine and replaced it with the more family-friendly R-rating. OK, maybe not. Though a great injustice was rectified, and just in time, too: The now-viable Blue Valentine has been picking up steady awards momentum from critics circles, and received two Golden Globe nominations earlier this morning for stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Does director Derek Cianfrance blame the MPAA for putting his nearly decade-in-the-making bit of awards-bait in peril?

"I think they just made a mistake," he told Movieline at the Cinema Society & Piaget screening of Blue Valentine in New York last night. "I think they confused intimacy and emotions with graphic. We tried to treat sex in the movie with great responsibility and realism -- like the rest of the movie is a realistic portrait of two people, so the sex is very realistic in our movie. It's not eroticized, it's just life."

That lived-in quality is one of the reasons Cianfrance feels the MPAA was so strict with the movie in the first place. "I think we were initially punished for the realism," he said. "They came to find that that was the wrong decision. I think more films need to show sexuality with more honesty."

That's all water under the bridge though, meaning Cianfrance -- like millions of other parents -- can decide for himself when his kids can see the film. "They're not ready yet," he said, obviously. "They're 6 and 3. But when they are ready I'd much rather have them see Blue Valentine than Basic Instinct. Blue Valentine is a cautionary tale, there are consequence to the sexual actions in the movie." Ahem, must we remind Derek of Sharon Stone's ice pick collection?

Additional reporting done by Lindsey DiMattina