Film, like most forms of cultural production, is expected to be responsive to external social control. The character of such control dynamics is contextualized by specific national and regional factors. In Ontario, Canada, the relevant body has (until recently) been the Film Review Board, a rotating committee of classification “experts.” Prior to 2019, all films required the approval of the Board before being distributed or exhibited in Ontario. This approval being mandated by law, any filmmaker refusing to comply could face legal consequences.

The legal dimension of the Ontario government's regulation of film content has the effect of equating certain forms of artistic expression with punishable criminality. Though rarely enforced, prosecution re-enforced the notion that government power remained the ultimate arbitrator of cinema's bounds of acceptability. This idea was problematic in many senses, not least of which is reflected in the idea that political power exists in a state of perpetual flux. The criteria by which cinematic expression could be declared criminal were subject to change, while the penalty of failing to comply remained constant.

Such issues came to light within the discourses surrounding OFRB's most recent high-profile controversy: its temporary refusal of classification to Catherine Breillat's critically lauded coming-of-age film À ma soeur! (2001), released to English-speaking markets as Fat Girl. The controversy surrounding this case demonstrates a rare instance of narrative filmmaking strategies constituting criminality, even though no aspect of the film and no part of the production process violated criminal law.

New Extremes and Classification Reform

By virtue of the way in which Fat Girl's abrasive aesthetic strategies combine with its storyline, and because of Breillat's reputation for using conventions of pornography in works such as Romance (1999), the film seemed to enjoy fewer grounds for protection as a controversial artwork than did Crash, posing what appeared to members of the OFRB to be a more serious and complex moral and ethical challenge. The film offers the story of two teenage sisters, both of whom lose their virginity (shown in sequences that are frank and explicit at times) during a weekend vacation.