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Six Art House Films in Which Sex Isn't Treated as a Miserable, Mutually Harmful Experience

By Matt Prigge

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jul. 18, 2007

Lady Chatterly

Don't Look Now (1973): During some downtime 30 minutes into Nicolas Roeg's head-spinning gothic horror, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie prove themselves to be cinema's most happily married couple. As the two graphically, lovingly go at it, Roeg famously juxtaposes images of them silently getting dressed afterward for a formal dinner--a nice touch Steven Soderbergh borrowed (without the sex part) for Out of Sight's classic meet-up centerpiece.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988): Philip Kaufman's leisurely adaptation of Milan Kundera's bestseller may unslink the source's slinky structure, but it gets one thing unquestionably right: the shtupping is great, liberating fun. Lena Olin defines the term "she's gotta have it" more than Tracy Camilla Johns ever could. And when Juliette Binoche is first given it by Daniel Day-Lewis, she actually manages to deliver the book's famous--and potentially solely novelistic--deflowered primal scream without embarrassing herself or us.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989): "You have a beautiful prick, Mr. Gynecologist," purrs moll wife Helen Mirren to initially tacit lover Alan Howard. Where 2001's Intimacy staged its (occasionally unsimulated) boning scenes like its central strangers were two animals engaged in battle, Peter Greenaway's NC-17 trendsetter lets his alien pair enjoy each other's, um, company in every nook and cranny of an upscale restaurant, complete with suggestive close-up cuts to peppers and onions being juicily sliced.

Late Marriage (2001): Let's not mince words: Dover Koshashvili's Israeli drama features the best sex scene ever. That's not because it's graphic--though it is--but because it captures the stuff no one ever shows: the downtime between banging sessions when couples don't pull up the sheets to hide their shame, but walk around nude, joke, talk and then go right at it again.

Y Tu Mam� Tambi�n (2001): Sure, sex can lead to heartbreak and dismantled friendships. But at least you get to have it first.

Lady Chatterley (2006): Ironically, Pascale Ferran's straight D.H. Lawrence adaptation contains the least graphic humping on this list. But for what it lacks in explicitness, it makes up for in warmth, with Marina Hands' petulant Lady and Jean-Louis Coullo'ch's pudgy lover engaging in some of the longest, slowest and most obviously satisfying bump 'n' grind sessions in mainstream cinema.