Blue Is the Warmest Color, the lesbian love story that won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has been rated NC-17 by the MPAA’s Classification & Ratings Administration, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Rather than contest the rating, cut the film or release it without a rating, distributor Sundance Selects announced that it will release the film beginning Oct. 25 with the restrictive NC-17 rating.

The adults-only rating means that no one 17 and under will be admitted to the film. Blue received the rating for “explicit sexual content.”

Since Sundance Selects, a sister label to IFC Films, owned and operated by AMC Networks, is not a studio subsidiary, it is free to release movies without a rating if it chooses, although some theaters decline to exhibit unrated films.

Officials at both the MPAA and the National Association of Theater Owners have long argued that there is a place for the adults-only NC-17 rating, although the major studios have generally avoided releasing films with the rating.

Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche from a screenplay he wrote with Ghalya Lacroix, the French-language film stars Lea Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, and was produced by Alcatraz Films, Quat'Sous Films and Wild Bunch. The film centers on a 15-year-old girl, played by Exarchopoulos, who falls for an older art student.

In France, the film received a rating of "12" by the French Ministry of Culture, indicating the film is unsuitable only for children younger than 12 years of age in that country.