MOVIES - Jan. 31, 1989

China’s first “sex movie” is disappointing audiences in Beijing, and its director charges that censors have cut out all the sex scenes. “It was boring,” one viewer said after watching “Widows’ Village,” a 90-minute film about love hampered by unusual marriage taboos in a fishing village in the 1940s. “We can see more than that in videos,” a well-dressed young woman said after viewing the movie. The Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, which censors all movies, denied knowledge of any cuts and suggested director Wang Jin may have hyped his movie to attract crowds. The 47-year-old director, who won one of China’s top awards for a movie in 1986, said it wasn’t hype. “I still think the film is improper for children. China is preparing to set up a system of classifying movies. . . . And I want my movie to be the first to be declared unsuitable for children.”