Inner City Council Removes Sexually Graphic & 'Offensive' Street Poster

The City Of Yarra isn't taking any chances with the collective constitution of its citizenry, removing a poster advertising 3D arthouse flick Love from council property over its explicit, close-up depiction of an ejaculating penis.

The film — which as The Age notes is directed by Gaspar Noe, a career provocateur and the son of Argentine intellectual Luis Felipe Noe — has been causing a stir in cinema-going circles for its graphic, multidimensional depiction of sex, even selling out its screenings at the Melbourne International Film Festival; it's now screening at Lido Cinema, in Hawthorn, for which the most recent run of posters has been utilised.

However, council apparently didn't appreciate its statue of Adrian Rawlins, on Brunswick St, being used as a makeshift podium for someone's pants-piece, with a spokeswoman ultimately telling Fairfax the offending picture was acting in contravention to its graffiti management policy and "was taken down mid-morning today by a council officer as it was on council property and deemed offensive".

The contentiousness of the film's marketing campaign seems to have come as a surprise to both its distributor, Exile Entertainment, as well as Lido Cinema, with both companies denying connection to the objectionable poster. As Fairfax reports, "Exile Entertainment [director] Alex Ouzas says his company did not include the penis image when it distributed hundreds of posters around Melbourne's inner city last week", while Lido's marketing director, Sue Ristovski, "said she had only received a promotional image of kissing tongues and the cinema had selectively chosen where to hang that image".

All of which raises an important prospect — that Melbourne has a guardian angel going around adding an apparently unofficial dick pic to this promotional campaign for no reason other than… entertainment? To make a point? It's hard to tell, but it's a pretty funny notion that someone maybe put time and effort into this either way.

Love screens nightly at Lido Cinemas until Wednesday 4 November at 9.15pm. See the cinema's website for more information.