During post-production of the new Jennifer Lawrence movie, Red Sparrow, the film’s distributors approached the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for advice on how they could secure a 15 certificate. They were told the film was likely to be classified 18 unless they removed one scene “of strong sadistic violence [a garroting]”. They did so – and the film sailed through with its 15.

Audiences, though, have been startled by the level of violence, especially sexual violence, that remains.

As ever, context is everything. Arguably, the reason the violence has caused such dismay is that this is a big budget studio blockbuster from the same director and star who gave us The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Red Sparrow is a mainstream movie that opened on hundreds of screens. As such, it is different from, say, Lynne Ramsay’s new feature, You Were Never Really Here, a vigilante thriller which is equally violent and also received a 15 certificate – but which comes labelled “art house”. Ramsay’s film (out this week) screened in competition in Cannes and has been earning rapturous reviews. The fact that it features a man killing multiple enemies with a hammer, or that it’s filled with references to sex abuse, hasn’t provoked any adverse comment at all.

If Red Sparrow had been a Russian-language movie from an eastern European director, its levels of violence probably would have been ignored. This, though, is a film with one of the world’s highest paid movie stars (playing a Bolshoi ballet dancer who retrains as a spy) and it is being marketed as an escapist night out at the cinema.

Some recent superhero movies have been equally violent. Tim Miller’s 15-rated Deadpool (2016) was trying to distinguish itself from the run of Avengers films, and to appeal to a more grown-up audience. It was also very tongue in cheek. Last year’s Logan, starring Hugh Jackman as a very long-in-the-tooth Wolverine, had its share of “strong bloody violence” (as the BBFC likes to call it) but again, audiences knew in advance what to expect.

By contrast, Red Sparrow blindsided cinemagoers. Jennifer Lawrence’s fans from her Hunger Games days didn’t expect to see her being sexually assaulted by an oligarch type in a hotel or attacked in the shower or tortured by the spy bosses. They’ve watched her wielding her bow and arrow many times before, but that probably didn’t ready them for the scene in which she beats her ballet rivals to a pulp.

The treatment of Lawrence in Red Sparrow is sadistic and voyeuristic. Director Francis Lawrence goes out of his way to make her suffer, treating her with a callousness that rekindles memories of Alfred Hitchcock’s behaviour with his “blondes” in films like The Birds and Vertigo.

It’s easy to understand what star and director were aiming for. They hoped to touch on darker themes than would normally be broached in a summer blockbuster. Lawrence’s character is both an extension of her Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (the heroine who was always game for any challenge) and a repudiation of it.

The failure here is one of marketing as much as of filmmaking. The public didn’t know what they were getting. The photocalls of Lawrence in the plunging Versace dress in the freezing cold didn’t help. Her male co-stars were all wrapped up warm but there she was, being made to suffer in the photo shoot, just as her character had been subjected to so much pain in the movie. “I would have stood in the snow for that dress because I love fashion and that was my choice. This is sexist, this is ridiculous, this is not feminism,” Lawrence protested, but the perception remained that she was being taken advantage of. Hollywood would never have treated Tom Cruise like that.

It is the second time in less than a year that Lawrence’s character has suffered onscreen and then ended up in the eye of the media storm. Darren Aronofsky’s eccentric and apocalyptic art house drama Mother!, in which she co-starred with Javier Bardem, had scenes of her being jostled and abused by a vindictive crowd. The crowd tears her baby apart. Unsurprisingly, Mother! was an 18.