That NC-17 rating has "Blue Valentine" stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams seeing red.

The drama, which tells the story of a young couple whose marriage is falling apart, received the racy rating because of its intimate sex scenes, meaning both marketing and ticket sales could be affected.

"It's an inappropriate rating," an outraged Gosling, 30, tells CNN, adding that violent movies rarely get slapped with an NC-17. "I mean, you go see films and the guys are getting their arms and their legs cut off and that's an R rating, but ... if it's in the direction of a woman receiving pleasure, you know, and she's complicit in a sexual act, it's pornographic."

Williams agrees that there's a double standard when it comes to both women and violence in movies.

"That's the thing that really gets me as a parent," says the mother of 5-year-old Matilda, her daughter with the late Heath Ledger. "Violence as pornography is condoned and accepted and given a sort of stamp-of-approval rating, and we're punished."

Prior to filming the scene in question, Gosling and director Derek Cianfrance told Williams, 30, she'd have final say on what appears on screen.

"I was in charge of how it was going to be represented and handed out into the world," she tells CNN. "As the woman in the situation, I looked at it and I thought, I've never seen that in a movie before, and it strikes me as honest and … I mean there's nothing sort of tawdry or salacious or pornographic at all about it."

Judge for yourself when "Blue Valentine" arrives in theaters on December 31.