Sex on Film
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Watching a film on cable last week, I was inspired to start thinking of the best sex scenes in film. I started making a list, though it was hard to stay on task. I kept wanting to include sexy scenes in addition to scenes with sex---the shower scene in Casino Royale, the bedroom scene in Twilight. From there I started including films with stars I merely think are sexy (Gael Garcia Bernal in The Motorcycle Diaries, Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild).
Eventually I pulled myself back to the task at hand, and came up with the list below. Here are my top 10:
10. The English Patient
A very romantic movie, with several sex scenes with the amazing Ralph Fiennes.
9. Mountains of the Moon
This is a little-known movie about the two Englishmen who discovered the source of Victoria Falls. One is an insecure and custom-bound aristocrat. The other is a free spirit, who in one memorable scene lies in bed with his mistress, passing a candle over her body.
8. The Piano
This Jane Campion film has Holly Hunter falling in illicit love with Harvey Keitel. This makes the list for the sheer quantity of nudity.
7. Brokeback Mountain
You really feel the terrible, powerful desire that the main characters feel for each other.
6. Secretary
An amazingly honest film about a shy young woman who finds her perfect match in her dominating boss. The scene in which he first approaches her, and which sends her into the office lavatory, is almost unique in film.
5. Original Sin
This movie with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie is not a great film, but I like it for several reasons. The love scenes with Banderas and Jolie are good. But even better is the scene between Angelina Jolie and Owen Wilson, playing for once a serious role. The way Owen Wilson's character can control her by manipulating her desire is, again, almost unique---a very rare nod to the strength of women's desire. So often men are portrayed as crazy for sex, and women are on the sidelines shaking their heads in incomprehension. This movie is a rare counterpoint to that mythology.
4. Stealing Beauty
At the end of this movie, Liv Tyler finally loses her virginity in the Italian countryside. Though it's a short scene, it really portrays the feeling of teenage sex for a girl.
3. Atonement
Library. Green dress. James McAvoy. Nuff said.
2. A Walk on the Moon
In the 1960s, middle-class, proper Diane Lane is with her husband and kids at the family camp people in her community go to every summer. The husbands go back to the city to work every week, and the wives stay at the camp with the kids. During the week, there's only one man around: the "shirt man" who sells clothes to the families out of his trailer. This shirt man happens to be played by Viggo Mortensen.
1. Enemy at the Gates
This war film got terrible reviews when it came out, but I've always loved it. Jude Law stars as a young man from rural Russia who is drafted into the Soviet army in World War II as a sharpshooter. The film depicts the siege of Leningrad and the character's battle with a Nazi sharpshooter brought in to find and destroy him. His love interest is played by Rachel Weitz, and their quiet sex scene in the barracks is absolutely one of the most powerful in all of movies. I admire the guts it takes by these actors to actually simulate real sex on camera and make it so believable.
Watching a film on cable last week, I was inspired to start thinking of the best sex scenes in film. I started making a list, though it was hard to stay on task. I kept wanting to include sexy scenes in addition to scenes with sex---the shower scene in Casino Royale, the bedroom scene in Twilight. From there I started including films with stars I merely think are sexy (Gael Garcia Bernal in The Motorcycle Diaries, Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild).
Eventually I pulled myself back to the task at hand, and came up with the list below. Here are my top 10:
10. The English Patient
A very romantic movie, with several sex scenes with the amazing Ralph Fiennes.
9. Mountains of the Moon
This is a little-known movie about the two Englishmen who discovered the source of Victoria Falls. One is an insecure and custom-bound aristocrat. The other is a free spirit, who in one memorable scene lies in bed with his mistress, passing a candle over her body.
8. The Piano
This Jane Campion film has Holly Hunter falling in illicit love with Harvey Keitel. This makes the list for the sheer quantity of nudity.
7. Brokeback Mountain
You really feel the terrible, powerful desire that the main characters feel for each other.
6. Secretary
An amazingly honest film about a shy young woman who finds her perfect match in her dominating boss. The scene in which he first approaches her, and which sends her into the office lavatory, is almost unique in film.
5. Original Sin
This movie with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie is not a great film, but I like it for several reasons. The love scenes with Banderas and Jolie are good. But even better is the scene between Angelina Jolie and Owen Wilson, playing for once a serious role. The way Owen Wilson's character can control her by manipulating her desire is, again, almost unique---a very rare nod to the strength of women's desire. So often men are portrayed as crazy for sex, and women are on the sidelines shaking their heads in incomprehension. This movie is a rare counterpoint to that mythology.
4. Stealing Beauty
At the end of this movie, Liv Tyler finally loses her virginity in the Italian countryside. Though it's a short scene, it really portrays the feeling of teenage sex for a girl.
3. Atonement
Library. Green dress. James McAvoy. Nuff said.
2. A Walk on the Moon
In the 1960s, middle-class, proper Diane Lane is with her husband and kids at the family camp people in her community go to every summer. The husbands go back to the city to work every week, and the wives stay at the camp with the kids. During the week, there's only one man around: the "shirt man" who sells clothes to the families out of his trailer. This shirt man happens to be played by Viggo Mortensen.
1. Enemy at the Gates
This war film got terrible reviews when it came out, but I've always loved it. Jude Law stars as a young man from rural Russia who is drafted into the Soviet army in World War II as a sharpshooter. The film depicts the siege of Leningrad and the character's battle with a Nazi sharpshooter brought in to find and destroy him. His love interest is played by Rachel Weitz, and their quiet sex scene in the barracks is absolutely one of the most powerful in all of movies. I admire the guts it takes by these actors to actually simulate real sex on camera and make it so believable.
posted by Anonymous at
11:27 PM
4 Comments:
Great list. I'd add Body Heat and Last Tango in Paris from their impact at the time they were made --even though I don't know how they would stand up against more recent films. Susan E
i remember sort of going limp during "Bull Durham," and for some reason "Tequila Sunrise" stood out for me (no idea). but the music + bodice squeezing + implied intercourse in "last of the mohicans" is also pretty . . . memorable. and "Mermaids" . . . well let's just say it broadened my horizons as a thirteen-year-old girl in the midwest whose virtue was untried.
(QUIZ: do you think they just heavy petted or Did It in "mohicans"?)
ALSO: which film on cable?
. . .
. . .
. . .
just askin'.
no reason.
I have no recollection of the sex in Bull Durham or Mohicans! I need to re-view these, and apparently see Mermaids as well. The film on cable was Enemy at the Gates. I had forgotten all about sex in that movie until I saw it again. If you watch it, send me your review!
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