Did you ever notice how sensitive you were to touch, until you could no longer? In “The Great Before”, payments were becoming contactless, but now coronavirus means we all are. Social distancing rules have been in force mere months, but already we’re indoctrinated. We instinctively shrink back if someone comes too close and express our dismay on social media at the encroachment of personal space or lack of care for the rules.
It feels odd to watch a series or film that exists in a world where a cough was a mild annoyance and reaching for the broccoli in the supermarket wouldn’t cause a stranger to have a paranoid meltdown. Drama and comedy rely on human interaction, so halted productions are now turning their thoughts to how they will incorporate social distancing into storylines – soaps, especially, as a shortage of content is imminent. Thanks to camera trickery and canny editing, keeping actors and crew safe may require little onscreen compromise, but it means a moratorium on more intimate scenes. You may think it’s no great loss and it’s often true that two costars are thrown together in blueish light and stripped to the waist for no reason other than to show off the results of a carb-free diet and HIIT training. But a love scene can be a pivotal plot point – the reality of two (or more) characters finding themselves up close, with nowhere to hide, their bodies doing all the talking, can be key to the narrative.
As an author, I make these decisions on behalf of my characters – does this scene add to their story in any way, or further the plot, or give you additional insight into their psyche? This is why, in my first novel, The Last Romeo, there are no sex scenes (sorry about that), but in my second, The Magnificent Sons, there are four (spoiler). We could be two years away from seeing newly filmed love scenes on screen and we may be all the poorer for it. Don’t believe me? There are hundreds of examples of on-screen flashes of flesh enriching the plot – here are just a few.
1. Normal People
The hit adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestseller uses sex to tell us where the characters’ heads are at – handy since, verbally, they’re wilfully monosyllabic. We start with Marianne being relieved of her virginity by a slightly more experienced, albeit far less confident, Connell. Further sex scenes show their intimacy, how relaxed they are with each other and their increasing awkwardness with the rest of the world. There is full-frontal nudity and an unflinching concentration on not only the technique but the practicalities – consent, contraception, kinks and dislikes – not to mention Connell’s chain jiggling merrily throughout. Any sex they have with others gets paid little mind other than to draw attention to the fact they’re not doing it with each other as they should be – likely an intentional move to make us believe the only right and true pairing is Connell and Marianne, no matter how flawed that view may be.
2. God’s Own Country
Johnny’s wordless, jackhammering bunk-ups with whoever on market days look especially hopeless when contrasted with his tender experiences with handsome Romanian farmhand Gheorghe. Hardened by a life dragging baby lambs from bleating ewes, Johnny is no sweet-talker and the first time they have sex Johnny defaults to functional. It pulls off what Brokeback Mountain never quite managed (for me, anyway). At the risk of sounding over sentimental, as Johnny soon learns that sex can be sensual and, spoiler alert, about love – even when just banging in a tiny caravan – you’re rooting for them all the way.
3. Showgirls
The famous sex scene in the pool is often written off as tacky and ridiculous. Our “Ver-sayse”-loving heroine, Nomi Malone, throws her head back in GCSE drama histrionics that can’t possibly be a result of creepy Zack Snyder’s moves. But that’s the point. Nomi knows her performance on this casting couch – or in this talent pool, if you like – is key to getting Zack onside and scoring a prime spot as a leading lady in his show, ousting her rival (and Zack’s girlfriend) in the process. What else can she do but convince him he’s the king? Zack buys it, even if the audience doesn’t. Hopefully no neck muscles were harmed in the making of this movie.
4. Pose
Ryan Murphy’s drama focusing on the 1980s New York ballroom scene has shone a long overdue light on the under-represented people and experiences within the LGBTQ community. The series two sex scene between Ricky and role model Pray Tell, played by effervescent activist and red-carpet showstopper Billy Porter, is not just about a young guy acting on his crush. Ricky has recently received an HIV diagnosis and Pray Tell, who has been dealing with his own diagnosis and the death of his lover, is offering the younger man practical advice on how to cope, before one thing leads to another. In gay sex scenes, cameras always seem to pan away a moment too soon, but here the sex is tender and healing but also passionate and we stay with them without it becoming an attempt to make it shocking or pornographic. Gay pleasure, with no apologies.
5. You
Actor Penn Badgley had already chastised viewers of shlocky, psychological drama You for finding his murdering protagonist, Joe, sexy, but his series two love scenes with the fittingly named Love opened up a new dynamic, showing this time the adorkable slayer wasn’t entirely in control. Their first coupling, done in near silence to avoid waking Love’s brother in the next room, sees Joe (now calling himself Will) as the prey. He’s entirely at someone else’s mercy for a change, complete with (horrible) necktie stuffed in his mouth, which, once he’s climaxed, is tenderly removed by Love – with her own mouth, obviously, because she is delightfully extra. This power shift makes sense when Love’s knack for disarming Joe is explained at the end of the series – she’s an obsessive murderous nutcase too! Love a happy ending.
6. Bound
There’s more shifting power play between Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in Bound. The sexual tension between ex-con Corky and mobster wife Violet is already at deathly pollen count levels when the two women reach the inevitable understanding. Then, inevitably, it’s all ballsed up by a man interrupting – in this case Violet’s husband. Thankfully, away from Violet’s plush apartment – and potential for further interruption – the pair do take things to completion, this time on a mattress in Corky’s much less salubrious pad. Who needs candlelight and satin sheets anyway? Shows like The L Word and Orange Is The New Black would eventually portray sex between women in a more realistic, less stylised way – and with much fewer compromises to the censors – but many acknowledge Bound paved the way.
7. Don’t Look Now
In any rundown of best sex scenes you can expect to find 1970s thriller Don’t Look Now. What makes it so special? Depends who you ask among its many fans. Rumours that leads Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland were doing it for real add to the lore (they weren’t), as do the slick cuts between the tender copulation and the post-coital dressing and back again, plus the fact it was the very first scene the pair shot after meeting. But it’s the story at the heart that drives it: a couple mourning the loss of their child relieve tension and rediscover themselves, hands akimbo, breathing gently in the afterglow. While the grief is not forgotten, they learn to let normal life run alongside it for now. Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight pays homage, but instead of showing the couple winding down post-bonk, Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney warm up to the action, through flirtatious appreciation intercut with “show me yours and I’ll show you mine” disrobing that, on the surface of it, is as sexy as getting changed for a 7am boot camp class – but somehow it works. Being J-Lo or G-Cloo probably helps, I guess.
8. Fleabag
Like much of Fleabag’s laughs and scrapes, the sex scenes are awkward and feel like an intrusion, but we’re always with her. In series two, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s eponymous hero finally gets to see what’s under Andrew Scott’s cassocks as the hot cleric of her fascination, for the first time, she turns the camera – and our gaze – away. Shame? A reluctance to share? An acknowledgement this is probably a bad idea? Sparing our feelings? We never know for sure, but it’s the beginning of the end for this unlikely pairing.
9. Queer As Folk
When Russell T Davies’ celebration of gay men premiered in 1999 it broke new ground within seconds, thanks to a very up close and personal shot of someone getting rimmed for the first time. This was no regular romantic televisual relieving of virginity, this was deflowering with a sledgehammer. It was unlike anything seen on TV before and this kind of ass play has been largely absent from TV schedules since. One notable exception is Lena Dunham’s Girls, which switches an impossibly glamorous loft apartment in Manchester’s gay village in Queer As Folk for bent over a sink in an NYC apartment.
10. Atonement
Keira Knightley has described the scene in the library, where her character Cecilia has sex up against a bookcase with James McAvoy, as her favourite sex scene. It is beautifully shot and seems almost too precise and perfect for a stand-up knee-trembler – but this is resolved when the pair are caught in the act by Cecilia’s younger sister. Once removed from the couple’s intimate reverie and plonked into young Briony’s POV, any erotic element is vaporised by the sight of them spreadeagled, bedraggled and mortified. It’s little wonder Briony mistakes this for assault, thus driving the entire plot of the film. In the moment, sex is a wondrous, fluid, magical thing – but what must it look like a casual observer? Two dogs humping, that’s what.
So what hope is there for the sex scene until we can get socially intimate again? Perhaps the answer is to turn to animation? Thankfully, it’s doubtful we’ll see re-creations of Team America’s exhausting, plastic bonkfest in a hurry, although Charlie Kaufman’s Oscar-nominated movie Anomalisa features a love scene more explicit and erotic than you might expect from two pillowy-looking characters in stop-motion.
Whenever ends, and we can begin to bridge the distances between us, it sure will be good to feel something again. In every sense.
Be the first to write a comment.