LOS ANGELES

SACHA BARON COHEN recently approached Elton John through a representative. Could he use “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” Mr. John’s hit song from “The Lion King,” for a pivotal scene in his forthcoming movie?

“Brüno,” an R-rated comedy set for wide release by Universal Pictures on July 10, stars Mr. Baron Cohen as a flamboyantly gay fashion journalist from Austria. The filmmakers wanted to play the song during a scene in which the title character, participating in a cage-fighting match, pulls down his opponent’s pants and kisses him on the mouth, prompting a horrified crowd to throw garbage at him.

The answer was no. Mr. John, along with the Walt Disney Company, which owns the copyright to the song but seeks his approval in such matters, learned of the scene’s particulars and blanched, according to one of Mr. John’s advisers. But then Mr. John reversed himself  kind of. He didn’t want to be associated with the provocative scene, but he ultimately agreed to perform part of another song that functions as a coda to the film.

So it goes for “Brüno,” a movie that, in mercilessly exploiting the discomfort created when straight men are ambushed by aggressive gayness, happens to (surprise!) expose homophobia. Gay groups are reacting with deeply mixed emotions, heightened by the recent triumphs (Iowa) and losses (California) in efforts to legalize gay marriage. Is the film then vulgar, inappropriate and harmful? Or bold, timely and necessary? All of the above?