A member of the French cabinet has vowed to strip back laws forbidding citizens under the age of 18 from seeing films featuring scenes of non-simulated sex in cinemas.

Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin made the unusual move after an ongoing controversy surrounding Love, a film directed by the enfant terrible of French cinema, Gaspar Noé, and which was widely panned and booed by critics when it premiered in Cannes earlier this year.

The film, directed by the Franco-Argentinian director of Irréversible and Enter the Void, features an extended non-simulated sex scene, presented to audiences in 3D, and was given and over-16 rating when released across France.

But a far-right conservative lobby issued a lawsuit against France’s cinema classification board, which forced the body to change the nationwide rating to viewers exclusively over 18 years of age.

Speaking to Canal +, Pellerin said that the film classification board’s hands were tied, because “we have rules that state that any film that shows non-simulated sex scenes must be forbidden for under-18s,” the Local reports. 

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

The Culture Minister said that attacks like this against contemporary cinema question the creative freedom of artists, and run counter to the French republic’s stance of liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

Gaspar Noé and the producer of Love responded to conservative critics by saying that their film is a non-pornographic 3D exploration of the beauty of making love.

The filmmakers made an official state appeal to overturn the over-18s cert to France’s national watchdog, the Conseil d’État, claiming that it is further sign that the officially secular state’s ultra-conservative Catholic hard right is exercising too much control.