Making Love in the Movies

kateoplis:

“One critic wrote that the lengthy lesbian sex scenes in this year’s Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color were “crucial” for establishing the narrative in this “shattering masterpiece.” But a Times critic, Manohla Dargis, called the film “wildly undisciplined,” and its sex scenes to be more about the director, Abdellatif “Kechiche’s desires than anything else.” Critics and audiences can disagree, of course. But when it comes to sex scenes, is there a way to distinguish between the good and the bad?”

“Cinematic portrayals of sex between women have often been seen as voyeuristic and exploitative. Unlike sex scenes between men, lesbianism is assumed to have wide appeal — straight women are curious, and straight men will apparently line up in any weather.”— Elisabeth Ladenson

“Blue Is the Warmest Color is a mediocre film that features some well-choreographed, lengthy and occasionally tedious lesbian sex scenes. Yet when I had the chutzpah to write a piece for The Daily Beast that challenged several critics’ assertions that these scenes were voyeuristic, sexist abominations, I was accused of coasting on my ‘male privilege.’” — Richard Porton

“Blue Is the Warmest Color, still raised eyebrows when it recently had its premiere in Cannes. Presumably, this is because it’s one of the first art house movies to so explicitly portray same-sex female copulation. The fact that a heterosexual man directed it drew the ire of certain critics, who challenged its perverse “male gaze.” Yet the beauty and verisimilitude of “Blue’s” sex scenes would be worthless without their meaning within the greater context of the story, which involves a young girl’s sexual awakening clashing with the hard realities of class and culture. They are good – even great – sex scenes because they go extremely far to show that sex always has its limits.” —Jordan Mintzer

“There is a self-congratulatory tendency in American films to separate sex from everyday life, which usually reduces sex scenes to nude “money shots.” A bad sex scene divorces eroticism from its characters’ emotions while a good sex scene brings emotion into the physical act. For that reason one of the best sex scenes ever filmed occurs in Max Ophuls’s “Earrings of Madame De…,” in which the fully clothed waltz by Vittorio DeSica and Danielle Darrieux comes complete with their mutual erotic attraction and its palpable emotional risks. Few other sex scenes match that one sequence; it should be a case study for every filmmaker.” —Armond White

“I do have one cautionary concern. We now know a lot about addiction to pornography and games. Addiction creates consumers but hurts their health and families. The film “Shame” reveals the isolation of a sex addict and how far he is from normal feelings. We need to be aware of how vulnerable humans are to manipulation. Before we find ourselves out on a limb of numbness we should be responsible about how far we push the audience when raising sensation over content.” —Martha Coolidge

“Sexual representations in movies must be seen as part of political discourse, and many of the portrayals today treat sex as a social danger. Sex educators, therapists, activists, scholars and sex workers have said time and again that sex education in our country is a public health crisis. Our national commitment to sexual silence – in the form of abstinence-based education, censorship and criminalization – means that we have no way to understand and teach young people about how to give (or not give) consent for sex, how to not be a silent witness to sexual violence, and why the culture of “slut shaming” must end. Moreover, our culture’s anxiety around sex leaves us with no language and skills to understand what we see on screen and to decide for ourselves what makes a good sex scene or a bad one.” — Mireille Miller-Young

Read on. 

“a smile is the best makeup a girl can wear”

ugh