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Sexual-Erotic Films

SEXUAL - EROTIC FILMS

Part 8


Sexual-Erotic Films
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Examples



Erotic Scenes in the 90s and 2000s:

The New Explicitness: Art and Independent Films

Famed director Stanley Kubrick's last film, an erotic, emotionally-involving art-house movie, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) , broke new ground by starring real-life couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a super-sexy New York City husband and wife. Its most talked-about sequence was a heavily digitally-edited, masked orgy with many naturally-endowed, almost-nude females, and Cruise's roaming through a mansion's rooms filled with copulating couples.

[画像:Romance - 1999]Shortly afterwards, female French director Catherine Breillat presented the notorious, sexually-graphic drama import titled Romance (1999) (with no MPAA rating, although it undoubtedly would have been an NC-17 rating with its full frontal nudity and explicit sex including masturbation, oral sex, and penetration) - it marked a turning point in the candid depiction of non-pornographic sex on screen. It recounted the tale of a teacher named Marie (Caroline Ducey) who sought out physical fulfillment and erotic sexuality from someone other than her boyfriend - a studly Paolo (porn star Rocco Siffredi), although she also revealed masochistic tendencies.

Other controversial mainstream films that would have been NC-17, all released unrated because of graphic sex (and sometimes violence), included Wayne Wang's The Center of the World (2000) about a weekend of sex in Las Vegas, Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000) with a simulated group-sex sequence involving Jennifer Connelly, and the French export Baise-moi (2001) (aka Rape Me). The latter film featuring both graphic sex and violence (that engendered a ratings controversy) was co-directed by feminists Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, and starred porn actresses Karen Bach and Raffaela Anderson as two 'bad girls' on the road.

[画像:Y Tu Mama Tambien - 2002]Patrice Chéreau's bleak French arthouse film Intimacy (2001), her first English-language film, was noted for extremely graphic and explicit sex scenes, heretofore unseen. It was the first theatrically-distributed film to depict the act of fellatio. It portrayed a married woman's (Kerry Fox) engagement in a series of once-weekly, Wednesday afternoon, emotionally-apathetic, physical encounters with emotionally-cold and lonely, divorced bar manager Jay (Mark Rylance). This controversial film exhibited their sexual couplings, with numerous, unflattering and raw, wordless sexual encounters.

[画像:The Dreamers (2003)]Director Alfonso Cuaron's sexy Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) (And Your Mama Too), a frank, bold and life-affirming, erotic coming-of-age road film, displayed generous amounts of both male and female nudity of two sexually-obsessed, 17 year old males and their older adulterous cousin's wife Luisa (Maribel Verdu) on a car journey to a non-existent paradisical beach. The traumatic reversibly-told Irreversible (2002, Fr.) included a shocking, real-time 9 minute rape scene (endured by star Monica Bellucci).

Other controversial and graphic works from fearless and provocative director Catherine Breillat included the shocking coming-of-age film Fat Girl (2001) - a painful look at the awkwardness of adolescent sexuality, Sex Is Comedy (2002) - about a female film director shooting a sex scene, and Anatomy of Hell (2004) - featuring a prolonged, demystifying study of the heroine's naked body over four nights by an indifferent gay stud rescuer (Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi), who describes his reasons for being repulsed.

[画像:The Brown Bunny (2004)]Bernardo Bertolucci's explicit film of sexual discovery and intimacy, The Dreamers (2003) was the first NC-17 rated film in 6 years. Writer/director/star Vincent Gallo's criticized independent film The Brown Bunny (2003) brought boos at the Cannes Film Festival and tremendous derision (and further broke down the division between pornography and erotica) with its actual hard-core scene of fellatio being performed in the film's final minutes between Gallo and real-life former girlfriend Chloe Sevigny in the role of Daisy. Gallo refused the NC-17 rating, and instead opted for having it unrated. Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004, UK) included many instances of unsimulated sexual intercourse between the two leads. And Trey Parker's un-PC Team America: World Police (2004) displayed puppets having sex.

John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus (2006) had the widest release of any film showing unsimulated sex, and was screened at the Toronto Film Festival and in theaters nationwide, including mainstream cinemas and multiplexes in malls.

Lesbian Films Often Sensationalized:

In the last few decades, lesbian film-making has been hampered by homophobia, funding difficulties, a limited pool of talented lesbian scriptwriters and directors, and the belief that marginal lesbian film audiences were unprofitable. That's probably why many lesbian representations have not been straightforward, and have instead opted for sensationalism. Lesbians have often been depicted as deviant psychopaths, criminals or murderers, as in Basic Instinct (1992), Single White Female (1992), Jennifer's Body (2009), Cracks (2009) and Chloe (2009), or as vampires in The Vampire Lovers (1970, UK) and The Hunger (1983, UK).

Lesbian-Themed Romance Films - With Happy Endings?

Lesbian tales, in the film sub-genres of romantic comedies or dramas, have become more commonplace in Hollywood cinema only recently. By now, lesbianism has become more acceptable and chic in mainstream filmic culture, where love and sexual attraction isn't just limited to heterosexuals only. This was confirmed when writer/director Lisa Cholodenko's comedy The Kids Are All Right (2010) about a lesbian family received acclaim during the 2010 Oscars season. In recent decades, Hollywood's depiction of lesbian characters has improved, although lesbian romances usually included conflicts and barriers to romantic union and were often resolved with heartbreak or tragedy. Examples abound, as in Personal Best (1982), Entre Nous (1983), Lianna (1983), Wild Side (1995), Cholodenko's own High Art (1998), Gia (1998), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), Lost and Delirious (2001), Mulholland Drive (2001), The Monkey's Mask (2002), and Monster (2003).

It was rare within 'queer cinema' to find openly lesbian characters with Hollywood-style, successful, happy-ending romances. There were a few feature films that portrayed positive female sexual relationships, although it took many decades to get there:

For further information, see this site's extensive: Sex in Cinema: Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes.


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