Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America

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The second official effort of the Dogme 95 movement, Von Trier’s impish provocation tells the story of a woman named Karen who, eager to escape from her life, falls in with a group of able-bodied adults who pretend to be mentally handicapped in public. Urged on by a conspiring Pepi, punky Bom stands on a chair and pees on meek Luci. Why? Because Luci is overheating of course. Next thing you know, they’re an item. Alex (Efron) is an intersex Argentine teenager trying to decide how to handle the psychological, physical and social reality of being born with both male and female genitalia. Not a sex scene, per se. We’re talking about the famous fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli, in which squeaky-clean Ryan reaches a screaming climax (presumably over the pastrami). We could have gone for the scene that gave American Pieits title, because – let’s face it – the sight of a teenager screwing baked goods remains pretty groundbreaking. But instead we prefer the moment where Jim (Biggs) is seduced by his flexible East European houseguest (Elizabeth), but sadly steps off the love train a stop or two early.

Hipster photographer Thomas (Hemmings) invites unnamed cover girls Birkin and Hills up to his flat for a ‘shoot.’ Following an extreme wardrobe malfunction, the women run riot in the studio in a tangle of diaphanous sheets, ripped leggings and flying limbs. Although Sweden has produced more than its fair share of internationally exportable smut, this intimate documentary portrait of two long-haired, free-spirited teens, Stoffe and Kenta, mostly intercuts revealing interview material with footage of their frequently dull existence. But it’s a celluloid milestone of sorts for eavesdropping on their sexual exploits. US-shot documentary footage combines with a madcap satire of modern Belgrade in this uncategorizable art-house favorite. Themed around the sexual and political theories of Wilhelm Reich, its heady mix includes Soviet propaganda clips, upsetting material filmed in insane asylums and even a psychotic Russian ice skater. An ’80s version of Fifty Shades of Grey, Lyne’s soft-core erotic classic chronicles the brief relationship between a wealthy Wall Street arbitrator (Rourke, still human) and the young art-gallery employee (Basinger) he bends to his will.

For his first sex scene, Diggler (Wahlberg) is paired with veteran porn icon Amber Waves (Moore). As the astonished crew witnesses the emergence of a major new talent, Amber’s warm maternal instincts help put her young costar at ease. The movie is full of professional penetration, but this scene – the Big Bang at the beginning of Dirk’s new life – is unique for its sweetness. Swank won an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a transgender man murdered in Nebraska in 1993. When Emperor Wang of the planet Porno uses his ‘sex-ray’ on planet Earth, it inspires all sort of kinky behavior. You get the picture.

Call it a hot take if you want, but South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are better at making movies than television – at least, it’s the medium where they’ve hit their targets most squarely. In this pointedly puerile action satire, the duo drop a WMD on both George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and the movies that propped up Reagan-era jingoism in the 1980s – using marionette puppets. D.H. Lawrence’s 1920 novel about the love lives of two sisters is given a sensual spin by British director Russell (working with pioneering gay playwright Larry Kramer).This undeniably erotic but also deeply sensitive French film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for its free and frank portrayal of two young women, Adèle (Exarchopoulos), a schoolgirl, and Emma (Seydoux), an art student. They fall in love and face the challenge of sharing something in the long term other than sex. In the ultimate show of commitment to their characters, the Idiots retreat to their house in the suburbs of Denmark and launch into a haphazard orgy, all while still pretending to be handicapped (they refer to the performance as ‘spazzing’). Karen isn’t explicitly involved in the action, but the rest of her newfound pals are a jumble of naked bodies on the living-room floor, erect penises poking out in all directions as the men and women groan and shake with fake palsies.

This hugely popular slice of 1970s French erotica tells of Emmanuelle (Kristel), an expat living in Thailand who liberally sleeps with men and women – mostly for our pleasure, of course. A decade before Basic Instinctlaunched the era of the mainstream erotic thriller, Lawrence Kasdan reinvented film noir for a sophisticated modern audience with this sweaty tale of scheming femmes fatales. The first sight of our hero’s morning tentpole signals the short’s lusty shamelessness, though his path to sexual fulfillment isn’t always an easy one. (Watch out for that cactus!) Two men make love in the water and we see a flash of an erection. As an act of rebellion, it was a happy accident, as Jarman recalled: ‘We left in the hard-on during editing and the censor unknowingly passed it because it was at the bottom of the screen and we showed it to him in the wrong screen ratio.’ Sweet talk gives way to rawer pleasures as Stoffe and a female playmate get down to it with the film crew in remarkably close attendance.

While nailed to the cross, an angel appears to Jesus and leads him on a guided hallucination of the life he might have lead. That life includes Jesus fathering a child with Mary Magdalene, and it turns out that sex is the best way to do that. Sure, it’s all a dream, and thus rather theologically protected, but that didn’t stop people from losing their minds over it. Film director Pablo (Poncela) meets a young man named Antonio (Banderas) and takes him home. The sex, Antonio’s first time with a man, is a lighthearted affair that sets in motion a much tenser series of events.