The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is a 1989 drama from writer/director Peter Greenaway. The United Kingdom/France co-production had to be released unrated in the USA to avoid the "X" rating that had become associated with pornographic films. In fact, this was one of the movies that helped motivate the MPAA to create the NC-17 rating (introduced in 1990), to create an "adults only" classification separate from the wild west of the X rating, which was not trademarked
