The much anticipated sadomasochistic Valentine’s Day film "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not a movie most parents would feel cool taking their kids to see.

In France, children who are 12 will be able to line up to watch a movie where a wealthy industrialist leads a young English Literature student into the world of submissive/dominance relationships by having her fill out paperwork before the spanking even gets started.

The French film board has seen the erotic flick and decided against giving it an exclusive adult certificate, The Associated Press reports.

Jean-Francois Mary, France's classification president, has judged that the picture, which is adapted from a book that got its start as online "Twilight" fan fiction, "isn't a film that ... can shock a lot of people."

The film, staring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, has been given an R-rating in the U.S., an 18 certificate in Britain, and has been banned outright in Malaysia to due to its overt sadism.

If "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not as hardcore as a bondage film should be, perhaps this is because of the changes made from the original E. L. James novel. Whereas the novel has our hero demanding our heroine eat her meals in front of him and employ Asian sex toys before a spanking session, these elements are absent from the film, Huffington Post reports.

Although maybe these changes might in the end make the whole thing more palatable. The Hollywood Reporter finds fault in the film’s “slow build to the smutty bits," but goes on to say that “the movie is, by definition, a stronger proposition than the book because it strips away the oodles of cringe-inducing descriptions and internal monologue that tip the text heavily toward self-parody.”

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