As the steamy sex shocker Intimacy is set to hit a York screen next week,

Evening Press film critic Charles Hutchinson gives a personal view on how

censors and audiences have adapted to raunchy exploits on celluloid.

NEXT week Intimacy, the most controversial film of the year, is due to open in York. It is the one with a few seconds of oral sex and an erection or two, and is scheduled to be shown at City Screen in Coney Street. Being an arthouse rather than mainstream film, with a limited number of prints, York has had to wait its provincial turn, for three weeks, to see what all the fuss is about.

Cosmopolitan London, the coterie of national film critics and the usual rent-a-quote pack already have had their say about a film made in London by a gay, 56-year-old French director, Patrice Chereau, starring the leading light of Shakespeare's Globe, Mark Rylance, and a New Zealander, Kerry Fox, as strangers meeting for silent, joyless sex in a dingy South London flat each Wednesday afternoon.

There has been debate over the quality of the sex as much as the quality of the film, and the general consensus has been:

That the sex is the most explicit ever to be granted a general release by the British Board of Film Classification

That the sex is ugly

That Intimacy is pretentious, miserable, self-conscious and drearily arty.

It is difficult to decide which of the three is considered the worst crime but Philip French, so long the voice of film in the Observer, best summed it up by lambasting Chereau's direction for its ineptitude and deemed the film to be "about as sexy as one of those films about VD they show new recruits in the Army".

No-one, prominent or otherwise, has called for Intimacy to be banned or cut and rather than outrage or upset, it has aroused nothing more than curiosity: albeit in far smaller numbers than the 'will they, won't they'? antics of Helen and Paul in Big Brother on Channel 4.

Here in York, the sound of silence has been deafening. Indeed, Nathan Hazel, general manger at City Screen, confirmed: "We haven't received a single complaint about showing this film."

Perhaps it is a case of the British becoming more blas, less easily shocked than the national stereotype and a mountain of British farces on stage and screen would have you believe.

After all, if Intimacy had not been stamped Made In England, would it have received half the attention?

Only last year, the far more graphic Romance, Catherine Breillat's savage, austere study of a young French woman on a sexual odyssey, was shown at City Screen (only at 5pm daily, strangely).

Recently there has been Lars von Trier's The Idiots, from Scandinavia, and the orgy scene in Stanley Kubrick's final US curtain call, Eyes Wide Shut.

It may have escaped your attention, but last Friday and Saturday, the infamous Ai No Corrida was shown in the late-night weekend slot at City Screen.

How times and attitudes have changed: today, the British Board of Film Classification's shift to a more liberal policy chimes in with film makers' desire for authenticity. Twenty years ago, after the Japanese answer to Last Tango In Paris had been refused a certificate, York Film Theatre had to apply for a club licence to screen Ai No Corrida at Central Hall, University of York.

Bill Lawrence, now head of film at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford, recalls that screening in his time at the Film Theatre. "I think it cost ten pence to become a member; everyone had to give their name and address, and then we could show the film," he says.

Bill cannot recall a film being forcibly withdrawn at the Film Theatre or York City Screen at Tempest Anderson Hall, nor indeed at the Odeon. "Monty Python's Life Of Brian was banned in Leeds but not in York," he says.

He believes the British Board of Film Classification's more open approach today is the right one.

"Censorship is a very tricky area, to be honest, but the BBFC is becoming more sensible about it, and although I do have doubts about videos being generally available, by and large I'm reasonably happy with the censorship laws for films.

"Nine times out of ten, films that are refused a certificate are rubbish anyway," says Bill.

"Basically, I don't think anyone over 18 should be stopped from seeing anything on screen unless it breaks the law, such as people being killed in the making of a film."

The City of York Council does not stand in the way of films such as Romance, Intimacy and Ai No Corrida being shown. The council line on Intimacy is as follows: "This is an adult-rated film production and councillors decided many years ago that they should not be seeking to intervene in the showing of films which had already gone through a certification process.

"In such circumstances the council feels adults are perfectly capable of exercising their own discretion as to whether a film is worth watching or not.

"However, the council does have an informal arrangement with City Screen where officers can discuss films which have yet to receive a certificate and, in these infrequent cases, we would draw upon documentary evidence such as reviews etc to make a judgement about whether we should give guidance as to a film's suitability for general audiences."

SURELY this is the mature and sensible approach, and while Intimacy may indeed be more intimate, it will not be the only artistic endeavour in York with the male appendage as its talking point. For one night only, on October 4, the Grand Opera House will welcome Puppetry Of The Penis, the Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami.

The show has sold out wherever it has gone, another suggestion that British sexual repression is receding. Then again, Intimacy can be seen legally by 12 year olds in France, whereas it carries an 18 certificate in the UK, and in Germany too.

I believe the Brits and the Germans got that one right: the graphic scenes need an adult context.

Updated: 10:46 Thursday, August 16, 2001