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The 50 Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema: #1-5
By Alison Willmore
on 07/25/2007
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
Dir: Philip Kaufman
Though it's less overtly sexual than the famous scene involving mirrors and a bowler hat between free lovin' Sabina (Lena Olin) and physician Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), there's a strong argument to be made for the superior, complex sensuality of the encounter shared by Sabina and Tomas' timid wife Tereza (Juliette Binoche). Fascinated and wounded by the idea of her husband's lover, Tereza is drawn to Sabina as image and then as woman. Their meeting is a gorgeously conceived and shot sequence in which the photographer Tereza takes some nude photos of Sabina, Binoche's eyes welling with a mix of emotions that defy description, before Sabina takes the camera herself. In almost complete silence, the women negotiate each other as women, then as subjects, and objects, the camera a sort of stand-in for the absent Tomas. The sequence of Olin tugging down the failingly reluctant (and topless) Binoche's underwear for her own nude photo session is a marvel of direction, tone and performance. --Michelle Orange
4. Risky Business (1983)
Dir: Paul Brickman
If you've never seen "Risky Business" and all you know about it is the oft-clipped bit where Tom Cruise dances in his briefs to the sounds of Bob Seger, you're in for a shock. This movie is as explicit and downright sexy as any in Hollywood history; no scene more so than the first encounter between Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay's Lana, a classic Hollywood prostitute (i.e. she's gorgeous, aroused, in no way afflicted by STDs). The sex is intentionally dreamlike: Cruise's Joel calls Lana and passes out on the couch while waiting for her to arrive. He awakes to find her slinking into his living room. Before you can say "Hey, she forgot her underwear!" the two are going at it in front of a pair of glass doors that open ever so suggestively in time with their lovemaking. As legend has it, Cruise and De Mornay were in the midst of becoming a real life couple during shooting, and the chemistry comes across big time. It's a shockingly hot moment, especially for a guy wearing tighty whiteys. --Matt Singer
3. Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Dir: David Lynch
Highly unscientific research polls were conducted amongst friends, colleagues and strangers to clarify which sapphic showdown is "the greatest" from David Lynch's noir-subverting, latter-day masterpiece. For some, it's the tender first time between Hollywood amnesia victim Laura Elena Harring and the fresh-off-the-plane actress helping to solve her mystery (Naomi Watts), as they share a bed after a traumatic afternoon. Harring slips off her new blonde wig, then her robe, and just the lingering stillness of her twin peaks feels like a tease. Half-under the sheets, a kiss on the forehead goodnight becomes a pause of knowing lust, lez-be-friends soon tonguing and grabbing at each other for dear life. Watts is wide-eyed: "Have you ever done this before?" "I don't know," replies an honest Harring, "have you?"
Definitely hot, but points lost for the digital blurring out of Harring's genitals, even if to appease censors. The film's real blood-racer is such a left-field eruption of pure, palpable sex that it's as potent as the first time: Watts, her life now a dingy-bathrobed failure, makes a depressing cup of coffee (certainly not Lynch's new blend!). She strolls to the sofa, revealing a topless Harring -- what the fuck? In the reverse shot, Watts has on only denim cut-offs, her coffee mug now a cocktail. "You drive me wild," purrs Harring, before telling her straddling partner that they "shouldn't do this anymore." Watts stares her down and fingers her inland empire violently until Harring pushes her away. But what does it all mean, Mr. Lynch? --Aaron Hillis
2. A History of Violence (2005)
Dir: David Cronenberg
By the time humble, happy marrieds Tom (Viggo Mortensen) and Edie (Maria Bello) have violent sex on the stairs of their house, we've already seen them do it once. Earlier in the film, they'd acted out a few teenage fantasies while Edie wore a cheerleader outfit. Even though the scene contains what director David Cronenberg's been told is the first onscreen instance of 69 in an American film, the exchange is sweet and innocent, almost virginal. When they hook up again, the couple's veneer of wholesome Americana has been shattered and Edie's learned that Tom is really a mobster-in-hiding named Joey. She slaps him and he grabs her and the two begin to fight on the stairs (a locale loaded with symbolic meaning for a couple in transition). Very quickly, the wrestling turns to brutal, combative sex. In his DVD commentary, Cronenberg notes, "It was a physically difficult scene to shoot and an emotionally very difficult scene to shoot. We wanted to suggest that she's attracted and repelled by Joey, and she's still looking for the Tom that's in this creature." It's a credit to Cronenberg's direction and his actors' talents that all of that comes across in their impassioned faces and moans of ecstasy and screams of pain. It's a sex scene that's erotic and disturbing and it actually tells us something about the characters in it. In other words, it is perfect. --MS
1. Don't Look Now (1973)
Dir: Nicolas Roeg
The love scene in "Don't Look Now" was a late addition, conceived of when director Nicolas Roeg decided that something was needed to balance out all of the fighting between the couple played by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Allan Scott's screenplay. And so he added what turned out to be the most tender, most emotionally complex, and yes, hottest sex scene on celluloid. Not the first thing you'd expect from a horror film, or, for that matter, from Sutherland, but the scene, which represents a kind of détente in a marriage strained by the recent loss of a child, is justifiably famous -- a portrait of a couple both intimately familiar with and in the process of rediscovering each other.
Christie and Sutherland start out in the bathroom -- she's in the bath, teasing him about encroaching love handles as he dawdles around in the buff. Later, lounging on the bed, they exchange kisses that lead to poignant, unplanned lovemaking, the scene intercut with shots of the two dressing for dinner afterward. In an interview with the Guardian, Sutherland suggested that the editing relieved any confrontational sense of scopophilia: "The audience never ended up being a voyeur, they watched a cinematic collage and were reminded of themselves." But more than that, it all serves as a compelling rebuke of that old Hollywood standard for love scenes: the clinch that leads to the fade to black. "Don't Look Now" is a reminder that everything that's commonly omitted in movies and represented by a quick cut or a flash of darkness is just as much a part of the story, and of life, as the conversations and confrontations that follow. --Alison Willmore
< 6 through 10 (link will take you to Nerve.com)
what about blue velvet should be in top ten
lo0o0o0ol
As most of your list is worthy of mention I must express
some outrage of the omission of Susan Sarandon and
Catherine Deneuve's quite stunning scene in The Hunger.
Also the first sex scene in John Sayles' Lianna must be on the list
if you are to rank High Art in the 50.
Also ~
It was the TRAIN scene in Risky Business that ruled.
kisses
Now, I can totally get behind the Laura Elena Harring - Noami Watts makeout sessions in "Mulholland Drive", but calling that piece of garbage a masterpiece? That's just wrong. The movie is totally incomprehensible.
Great list!! I'm trying to collect them all.
Meanwhile, anyone interested can check out my little blog (yeah I know, shameless self-advertisement) for some good quality dvdrip of nude/sex movie scenes.
http://nudemoviescenes.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!! :)
Why cat click on a video to see
It wont open
How could you possibly have missed "Realm of the Senses", probably the most graphic and erotic mainstream movie ever made?
"It's based on a real, notorious incident in Japan in 1936. Elko Matsuda is Sada, a former whore who goes to work as a geisha in the house of Tatsuya Fuji. He makes immediate advances towards her, having no idea what he's getting into. Sada, it turns out, is sexually insatiable; he can never have enough erections to satisfy her. The affair turns sadomasochistic as the couple push themselves towards the ultimate ecstasy."
efilmcritic.com
no
Takeshi, MULHOLLAND DRIVE is incomprehensible to STUPID PEOPLE. Anyone who's seen it more than once knows how easy it is to comprehend. And it IS a masterpiece!
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