It was a big deal to say “damn” in Gone With The Wind.
Now, I can’t think of a single swear word that cannot be said in a film.
I can remember people going to see Barbarella to see a fleeting glance of Jane Fonda nude…well, kinda nude.
Now, it is no big deal to see a woman, and even sometimes a guy, totally nude on screen.
So is it a stretch to think that there will soon be a full out, pornographic, leaves nothing to the imagination, sex scene in a film at your local cineplex? Not just implied, I mean the real deal. And I also mean a film of quality that could qualify for an Oscar.
Gonna happen, or not? And if so, any bets on when?
It’ll require a mainstream director who can throw in an explicit sex scene in an overall quality film. Brown Bunny was vaguely headed in that direction but was such a goofy film that it had no chance of being seen anywhere beyond the art-house crowd, and was ridiculed even by them. Eyes Wide Shut also came close, but again the plot was laughable and the film didn’t have any real appeal beyond its sexual elements. It won’t be the sex that’ll sell the film; we already have hardcore XXX if all you want to see is genital-crashing, it’ll be an actual (gasp!) storyline that make some semblance of sense.
Romance (1999) is a “non-porn” French film that AFAIK shows real, non-simulated hardcore sex (I haven’t seen it myself).
It was reviewed by Roger Ebert, which has to make it somewhat mainstream, and played IIRC in some arthouse theaters in the US.
I think that the answer to the OP’s question has to be “yes”, especially since it was not phrased to be US-specific. Clearly, the Cineplex in Anytown USA isn’t yet ready to show intercourse, but don’t forget that Midnight Cowboy won the Best Picture Oscar in 1970. A movie doesn’t have to play in every small-town multiplex to be Oscar-worthy.
My prediction? Within the next 10 years, a film with hardcore sex scenes will be shown on enough screens in the US to meet the OP’s criteria for “mainstream”. There will still be some holdouts, of course, just as there are still some “dry” counties (i.e. where the sale of alcohol is illegal).
I hope it doesn’t happen. Movies shouldn’t ever need even the softcore sex scenes they currently have. They seem to be there solely for titillation, and though it can be argues they show the truth of a relationship, we don’t actually need to see it to get that sense.
Nudity I’m okay with, the whole L-shaped bedsheet is an absurdity. But we don’t need sex scenes of any kind, unless the story is completely about sex. And it’s rare when a good story comes out of that topic, and gets a truly discerning audience and not just the people who wants to see naughty bits.
I work in porn. That’s where sex should be portrayed. I have no problem with making a porn film that is of high quality with a good story - if it was possible - but the other way around seems unnecessary to me.
Terry Southern’s novel BLUE MOVIE, about a director based none-too-loosely on Stanley Kubrick who gets it into his head to produce a porn film beautifully shot, expertly scripted, exquisitely acted, and funded out the wazoo. Fiction, of course, but it presents a scenario that might make it happen someday.
The Idiots is another continental film that had a mainstream release with explicit sex - and there’s a British film out at the minute which has numerous such scenes, but I can’t remember the name of it.
As for defining ‘mainstream’ as ‘capable of winning an Oscar’ - there’s plenty of things the Academy need to start being able to reward, quite apart from sex scenes.
John Cameron Mitchell, who directed Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has been working on such a film for the last couple of years although it may not meet the standard definition of “mainstream.”
I wonder if the Screen Actor’s Guild might eventually step in and prevent such a thing if it ever threatens to be common. I mean, an art film here or there, okay, but actresses have a hard enough time finding parts and now they aren’t expected to bang leading men they barely know on camera.
There’s also Intimacy, another British movie, and Baise Moi, a harsh French movie. It seems that these more mainstream movies (including Romance that include explicit sex are all pretty much depressing bummers. Let’s have a romantic comedy that includes some good humpin’ and pumpin’!
Wouldn’t you love to see Meg Ryan in:
When Harry Did Sally? Joe’s Like a Volcano? You Got Nailed?
Instead she does her nastiest work in a piece of crap like “In the Cut,” which had an explicit oral scene (not involving Meg) that apparently involved a prosthetic.
Back in the 1960s, it seemed for a time that sex might be accepted as part of normal moviemaking. The film that attracted the most attention was the Swedish film titled I Am Curious (Yellow) in the U.S., which contained actual intercourse. This was five years before Deep Throat made porn chic, remember.
At the time foreign films were taken far more seriously than they are today: it was the heyday of Antonioni, Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Goddard and a dozen other major names. They had pushed realism in films far ahead of the genial idiocy of 50s U.S. movies, and sex was just one element of a larger view of humanity.
These movies weren’t mainstream in the modern sense, as they played in only a few art houses in the days before cineplexes, but they considered part of the basic viewing and vocabulary for anyone who was seriously interested in film as an art.
In that sense, it’s barely possible that the kind of movies that show up at the several zillion annual film festivals may start to include sex scenes, just as Brown Bunny did. Considering that the blowjob scene is available at ifilm.com the notion of real life sex hasn’t ended western society as we know it.
But how anyone could possibly expect mainstream sex in a culture that freaks out over a one-second inadvertent exposure of a nipple on television is beyond me.
Been curious about that scene, since it’s a semi-mainstream film. Obviously you can find porn anywhere, but since these were serious actors . . . thanks for directing me to a place to see it.
Man, that’s the least erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I think I’m going to become a monk; I certainly don’t foresee myself being at all interested in sex, ever again. If the whole movie was that uncomfortable, no wonder everyone hated it.
Has anyone seen that movie, or read enough about the plot to explain that scene? Were they supposed to be lovers, or what? Either they have supremely bad chemistry, or there wasn’t supposed to be any attraction between the two characters.