The 101 best sex scenes in movies of all time

Director: Nicolas Roeg
Bedfellows: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland

The film
Working with a Daphne du Maurier short story, Roeg gives us Laura (Christie) and John (Sutherland), a married couple who travel from Britain to Venice for his job after losing their young daughter in a drowning accident.

The sex scene
It’s a simple predinner sex scene in a hotel room, but the way Roeg shoots and edits it, and the manner in which the actors perform it, makes it extremely powerful.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It just feels so real. It’s also a rare sex scene that chimes in perfect harmony with the film around it. Their sex feels like both an expression of grief and a welcome respite from it. Most of all, the actors just look like they know what they’re doing. No wonder they’ve been denying the sex was real ever since.

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Bedfellows: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann

The film
After the catatonic breakdown of stage star Elisabet (Ullmann), she and nurse Alma (Andersson) enter into a fluid, mesmerizing power struggle, also a meeting of the minds.

The sex scene
In a semidarkened room, Alma relates a tale of sex on the beach with her girlfriend and a pair of underage boys, an incident with dire consequences.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
A classic sex scene with no actual sex in it? That's expert-level, folks. It helps to be Ingmar Bergman, the master director who could wring a heartbreaking monologue out of a shoe. Andersson's matter-of-fact relation of graphic acts makes the scene unbearably hot. The moment was often cut from prints by concerned censors. Famously, Roger Ebert wrote, ‘The imagery of this monologue is so powerful that I have heard people describe the scene as if they actually saw it in the film.’

Director: Ang Lee
Tentfellows: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal

The film
Based on Annie Proulx’s story about the love affair between two cowboys, Ang Lee’s beautiful, swooning film starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as range hands who fall in love. 

The sex scene
It gets mighty cold up there in the hills of Wyoming. After a night drinking whiskey, the ranchers huddle up for warmth, and then…

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Ang Lee put gay sex in the mainstream. Conservatives accused the film of promoting a gay agenda, but don’t they always? Brokeback Mountain picked up three Oscars from eight nominations in 2006, but not Best Picture (which went to Crash). Some critics, including Roger Ebert, believed homophobia factored in the voting.

Director: William Heise
Bedfellows: May Irwin, John Rice

The film
At just 18 seconds long, ‘The Kiss’ (sometimes known as ‘The May Irwin Kiss’) is one of the earliest films to be shown to the public. Directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison, it recreates a kiss from a popular musical of the time, The Widow Jones.

The sex scene
To be honest, it’s barely a kiss; there’s definitely no tongues or bodily fluids exchanged as actor John Rice tweezes his moustache in preparation before he goes in for what is more of a peck. 

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Officially the first ever film to feature two people kissing, it caused an uproar, with one commentator writing that it was ‘beastly enough in life size on the stage, but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over, it is absolutely disgusting.’ Sounds like a film critic to us.

Director: Nagisa Oshima
Bedfellows: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda

The film
Oshima’s 1976 masterpiece – the crown jewel of a career hell-bent on upsetting the establishment – recounts the true story of the all-consuming sexual obsession that blossomed between a hotel owner and his new employee in 1936 Tokyo.

The sex scene
How do we pick just one? A marvel of escalation, In the Realm of the Senses is an almost constant stream of increasingly perverse sex acts. To isolate any moment from the maelstrom of deviant (and unsimulated) behavior would be arbitrary by default. Nevertheless, we’d argue the sequence that most pushes the boundaries occurs when Kichizo (Fuji) inserts a hard-boiled egg into the vagina of his new bride, Sada (Matsuda), in full view of the people serving them dinner. He then instructs Sada to squat like a hen and lay the egg on the floor before he eats it. In most films, the pain that Sada experiences would immediately classify the act as sexual assault, but In the Realm of the Senses renders our judgments irrelevant.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Even for generations raised on free Internet porn, the acts on display in Oshima’s movie are still taboo. In the Realm of the Senses was the first nonpornographic film to include blow jobs, and there’s a very graphic one prior to the scene of food insertion. But it’s only when you watch that egg disappear that you begin to comprehend the full extent of the film’s transgression.

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Interrogation roomfellows: Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, Newman from Seinfeld

The film
It’s the erotic thriller that spawned countless pale imitators. Starring Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, a novelist suspected in a string of very sexy murders, and Michael Douglas as the cop desperate to get her in handcuffs…if you know what we mean. 

The sex scene
Brought in for questioning, Tramell gets a roomful of already sweaty cops even more hot and bothered by casually describing the deviant sex she used to have with her ex who’s recently been ice-picked to death. Then she uncrosses her legs, revealing that being a successful mystery writer doesn’t pay enough to afford her undergarments. Poor thing.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Basic Instinct contains several graphic, often violent depictions of actual intercourse, but nothing made ‘90s audiences gasp more than a fleeting shot of female genitalia. The moment was parodied endlessly, which took some of the scandal out of it - Seinfeld even recreated the scene with a profusely sweating Wayne Knight grilling Jerry about mail fraud. At the time, though, it was genuinely shocking to see a woman’s anatomy weaponized so salaciously. Stone later claimed Verhoeven misled her about the amount of skin that would make it to screen, but she’d get some measure of indirect revenge by participating in the awful sequel, which he had nothing to do with. 

Director: Martin Scorsese
Bedfellows: Willem Dafoe, Barbara Hershey

The film
Bluntly adapting Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel of the same name, Scorsese’s most controversial film portrays the Son of God as a fallible man, liable to the vices and temptations with which all human beings must contend.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s Jesus Christ having sex. That’s not exactly what he’s known for.

Director: Frank Capra
Not-quite-bedfellows: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable 

The film
A slapstick comedy starring Claudette Colbert as a spoiled heiress running away to elope with the wrong guy. Clark Gable is the disgraced reporter she meets on the bus to New York City. Her plan changes. 

The sex scene
No sex here, just a tricky situation: Colbert and Gable are forced to spend the night together in a hotel room (pretending to be husband and wife) when their bus breaks down. Gable hangs a sheet between their twin beds for modesty’s sake.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Because sheet or no sheet, this was the era of Hays Code censorship, intended to stamp any whiff of misbehavior.

Director: Gustav Machaty
Bedfellows: Hedy Lamarr, Aribert Mog

The film
Czech director Machaty’s overheated melodrama about an impotent husband, a frisky young wife and the beau who spots her skinny-dipping made an international icon of 19-year-old Hedy Kiesler. US customs burned an uncensored print, but it didn’t stop MGM’s Louis B. Mayer from signing up the starlet, renaming her Hedy Lamarr and launching a new Hollywood goddess.

The sex scene
Hedy’s much-cut nude swimming brought her notoriety, though even more groundbreaking is a semiclothed love scene, where the camera rests on her face as passion mounts. Note also the highly symbolic string of pearls falling to the floor.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s nothing less than the first onscreen female orgasm.

Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Bedfellows: Kathleen Turner, William Hurt

The film
A decade before Basic Instinct launched 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 sex scene
After chasing her around for days like a puppy in heat, Hurt’s smug lawyer Ned Racine finally tracks temptress Matty Walker (Turner) to her lair. Enticed by her come-hither eyes (‘You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man’), he smashes a window and dives into her waiting arms.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Most movies use sex either as cheap titillation or as a form of punctuation. In Body Heat, it’s all about character. These characters are both playing roles here: he, the mad-with-lust macho man; she, the shrinking coquette. The thing is, only one of them knows it’s all an act.

Director: Kimberly Peirce
Fieldfellows: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny

The film
Swank won an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a transgender man murdered in Nebraska in 1993.

The sex scene
At night in a field so dark and striking it feels like a faraway dream, Brandon (Swank) and Lana (Sevigny) have sex for the first time. Lana tells it in flashback to her friends, her emotional arc doubled by the way the scene bounces between present and past.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Boys Don’t Cry is a tragedy. Yet it is still the most culturally prominent portrayal of a transgender man in American cinema (despite the fact that it does not, in fact, star a transgender man). Its brutal conclusion claws at the memory two decades years after its premiere, but its hopeful moments remain just as important.

Director: Gerard Damiano (as Jerry Gerard)
Bedfellows: Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems

The film
Possibly the most famous X-rated film of all time, comedic sex-romp Deep Throat stars 23-year-old Lovelace as a woman who discovers her clitoris is in her throat.

The sex scene
Linda is unable to orgasm, so she pays a visit to a psychiatrist, Dr. Young (Reems) – a real kook but horny as hell. He discovers her unusual condition. His solution? A technique called ‘deep throat.’ He suggests Linda practice on him.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Deep Throat brought hard-core sex to the mainstream. Celebs like Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and Truman Capote went to see it, as did millions more. The clampdown – Deep Throat was banned in certain parts of the US – only fueled the phenomenon. Shot for $25,500 (of mob money), it made an estimated $500 million at the box office. Years later, the film was still making headlines when Lovelace claimed that her then-husband Chuck Traynor forced her into taking part.

Director: Luis Buñuel
Bedfellows: Catherine Deneuve

The film
In her most iconic role, Catherine Deneuve plays Séverine, a beautiful and bored Parisian housewife who takes a job working the afternoon shift at a high-end brothel.

The sex scene
Séverine and her adoring husband Pierre are curled up in a horse-drawn carriage in the countryside. ‘If only you weren’t so cold,’ he says, breaking the spell. Séverine recoils and Pierre orders the drivers to gag her, tie her to a tree and whip her. Séverine is in ecstasy. Then she awakens: The entire scene is a daydream.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Buñuel’s transgressive exploration of desire and fetishism make this one of the most celebrated erotic movies ever made. And the fact that Séverine is not punished for her double life, puts Buñuel on the side of feminism.

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Bedfellows: Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer

The film
It’s 1983, the shorts are short, and the music is by the Psychedelic Furs. In a summer villa in Northern Italy, sensitive teenager Elio (Timothée Chalamet) comes of age after his academic father invites a grad student, Oliver (Armie Hammer), to stay with them. The flirtation becomes mutual.

The sex scene
Up in the sweltering attic, Elio writhes in sexual frustration. He takes a peach, crushes his thumb into it, removes the pit, and finds a cathartic use for the fleshy cavity he’s made. Then Oliver discovers him, and things get even hotter.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Already a sensation in the short time since its Sundance debut, Guadagnino’s emotional adaptation of André Aciman’s revered gay novel does right by its most notorious scene, vaulting the movie into the naughty, adult realm of Bernardo Bertolucci.

Director: Hal Ashby
Bedfellows: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort

The film
This is the hippyish story of what happens when depressive, death-obsessed rich boy Harold (Cort) meets Maude (Gordon) an optimistic, happy-go-lucky 79-year-old.

The sex scene
Director Hal Ashby’s original script included a full-blown sex scene between Harold and Maude, but the studio put its foot down. So we have to make do with a postcoital scene. While Maude sleeps, Harold sits up in bed blowing bubbles. 

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Without Harold and Maude, there would be no Rushmore or Almost Famous. And when was the last time you saw a movie that treated the sexual desires of a woman over 60 as something other than the butt of a joke?

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Bedfellows: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux

The film
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.

The sex scene
When Adèle and Emma first hit the bedsheets, Kechiche shows their lovemaking in intimate detail: a long, no-holds-barred sex scene.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
On paper, six minutes doesn’t sound long. But when you’re sitting through kissing, sucking, licking and slapping, six minutes feels very long indeed. Audiences who thought they’d seen it all suddenly realized they hadn’t.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Bedfellows: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint

The film
Cary Grant does the classic Hitchcock wrong man thing, fleeing across the American heartland after being mistaken for a secret agent by a sinister cabal of foreign spies. He’s soon joined by Eva Marie Saint’s platinum blonde, who may or may not be manipulating his libido for her own mysterious purposes. 

The sex scene
After the big finale on Mount Rushmore, Grant and Saint are seen getting snuggly in a train car, engaging in a Hays Code-compliant series of awkward closed-mouth kisses. Then, Grant hoists her up on the bed, at which point Hitch cheekily cuts to a shot of a very long train entering a tunnel. 

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s arguably the most audacious visual double entendre in film history, a sweaty middle finger to the prudes running the studio system. It’s also the gold standard of cinematic sex jokes, providing the template for every symbolic use of bananas, locomotives, popsicles, hot dogs and peaches to come.

Director: Trey Parker
Bedfellows: Two puppets

The film
South Park rabble rousers Trey Parker and Matt Stone send up the War on Terror, American jingoism, Michael Bay and celebrity culture through the lost art of Thunderbirds-style marionettes in a musical takedown of blockbuster cinema and red, white and blue hubris. 

The sex scene
Heroic actor-turned-soldier Gary gives teammate Lisa a tender crash course in the Kama Sutra, thrusting, panting and pile-driving away as a guitar-heavy love ballad urges them on. 

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The sex scene is the cinematic equivalent of two perverted 12-year-olds clunking their GI Joes together, but the satin-sheet gymnastics on display actually got Team America slapped with an NC-17 despite the puppets’ lack of genitalia. To achieve R-rated status, Parker had to cut a golden shower, some poop play and a particularly ravenous bit of cunnilingus. 

Director: Stephen Frears
Bedfellows: Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke

The film
This mid-1980s London-set British comedy tackles issues of race, sexuality and politics with a pleasingly light touch as it tells the story of Omar (Warnecke), a young British-Pakistani man seduced by the capitalist dream – David Ehrlichspite his father being a left-wing radical. That’s not all he’s seduced by: He falls for Johnny (Day-Lewis), a local roughneck whose aggression and racism mask tenderness.

The sex scene
When Omar’s uncle opens a gleaming new laundry, Omar and Johnny fall into each other’s arms in the back room as the opening party kicks off next door.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Frears presents an interracial, same-sex relationship as nothing special: not an issue, not a dilemma – just fun, youthful and impulsive.

Director: Nagisa Oshima
Bedfellows: Charlotte Rampling, a chimpanzee

The film
Having brushed aside sexual taboos with Empire of the Senses, Japanese maverick Oshima subsequently posited a bourgeois wife’s love affair with our nearest animal relative (courtesy of vivid prosthetic costumery). Aware that our imaginations are filthier than anything they could put onscreen, the filmmakers deliver an urbane comedy of manners facilitated by Rampling’s ability to seem like she’s always up for anything.

The sex scene
When hubby discovers Rampling in her secret Parisian love nest, he pulls back the sheets to reveal her simian playmate.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
How many comedies about bestiality are there?

Director: Rob Reiner
Boothfellows: Meg Ryan, with an audience of Billy Crystal

The film
Up there with Some Like it Hot and Annie Hall, this is one of the all-time rom-com greats. Sally (Ryan) and Harry (Crystal) stay friends for over 12 years – through traumas, break-ups and divorce – before they realize they’re made for each other.

The sex scene
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).

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Female orgasms had always been a no-no in the movies. Scriptwriter Nora Ephron ingeniously dodged the problem by taking the climax out of the bedroom. And without her masterpiece of script, stuffed with one-liners and heartfelt life lessons, we’d have no Knocked Up.

Director: Adrian Lyne
Bedfellows: Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke

The film
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.

The sex scene
Today, the kids call it ‘sploshing.’ Revisiting a foodie motif from earlier in the film, Rourke sits Basinger at the foot of his refrigerator and begins feeding her all sorts of squishy, gooey foods (anything that you wouldn’t want to eat in bed is fair game). Basinger slurps strawberries out of Rourke’s hand as the Newbeats’ ‘Bread and Butter’ plays over the soundtrack. It’s all fun and games until Rourke switches to honey and the two lovers begin tasting each other.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Featuring the sex scene that launched a thousand imitators, Nine 1/2 Weeks did for food what Marilyn Monroe did for blonds.

Director: Spike Lee
Bedfellows: Lee, Rosie Perez

The film
A Bedford-Stuyvesant block explodes on the most sweltering day of the summer, as a local pizzeria becomes a magnet for racial tensions.

The sex scene
Long before the movie eases into its more serious register, delivery boy Mookie (Lee) goes AWOL from his route, teasing girlfriend Tina (Perez) with dripping ice cubes skillfully applied to bared parts of her body.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The scene, no doubt, gave plenty of couples a few new ideas. It's also a perfectly judged comic interlude – a refresher, if you will – in a tightly plotted drama. But for all the nudity on display, it never feels gratuitous. Rather, it's a crucial reminder of the joys we have to live for.

Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Orgyfellows: Too many participants to name

The film
Determined to make a place for sex in cinema outside of pornography, John Cameron Mitchell created this panorama of sexual problems and possibilities centered around an underground salon in New York City.

The sex scene
In the midst of a citywide power outage, everything comes together in a final climax of togetherness. The characters arrive one by one, wordlessly smiling at each other and approaching one last sexual burst. A band arrives, the tempo quickens, and the room spins. Happiness is a chorus and an orgy.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Explicit, unsimulated sex isn’t always pornography. All of Shortbus makes this argument. The point here is sex as character development, as metaphor, as art. It’s something filmmakers shouldn’t be afraid of.

Director: Hal Ashby
Bedfellows: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight

The film
Ashby’s antiwar drama escaped from the colossal shadow of The Deer Hunter by virtue of its intimate focus on the blossoming affair between an army wife and the paraplegic soldier she meets when her husband is serving in Vietnam.

The sex scene
In what Variety described at the time as ‘a masterpiece of discreet romantic eroticism,’ Sally (Fonda) and Luke (Voight) finally consummate their burgeoning romance. His handicap is the elephant in the room, but it does nothing to diminish the quality of their sex – in fact, Sally enjoys her first orgasm.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The Vietnam War returned a generation of American men back to their lives with devastating wounds, physical and otherwise. Coming Home was the first film to confront this epidemic, targeting men at their most sensitive areas in order to illustrate that they may be wounded, but they’re still alive.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Bedfellows: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore

The film
Launching PTA into the firmaments, this epic rise-and-fall saga of big-dicked, small-brained Dirk Diggler depicts the porn industry’s comedown into the age of home video.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Released just before the Internet pulled porn into its most popular incarnation, Boogie Nights arrived at the perfect time to make adult movies feel cool again. The film is hardly a blind endorsement for the industry, but watching an actor of Moore’s caliber disappear into a scene like this introduced a little sincerity into smut.

Director: Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione, Giancarlo Lui
Bedfellows: Anneka di Lorenzo, Lori Wagner

The film
Here’s a Hollywood curiosity: a historical drama chronicling the depraved reign of the Roman emperor who fell in love with his sister. It all looks so proper on paper, with literary heavyweight Gore Vidal writing the script and British thespians Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud starring. But Caligula was bankrolled to the tune of $10 million of by Penthouse boss Bob Guccione, who, unhappy with the film, secretly filmed explicit scenes after the shoot wrapped. These days we can choose between the arty and hard-core versions.

The sex scene
From the latter cut, naturally, comes the famous lesbian scene, starring Penthouse Pets Anneka di Lorenzo and Lori Wagner, who engage in a three-minute romp with zero relevance to the plot.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Caligula was panned by critics, Variety calling it ‘a moral holocaust.’ Banned in the UK for 30 years, the film is now a cult classic. Helen Mirren described it as ‘an irresistible mix of art and genitals.’ In 2005, the artist Francesco Vezzoli made a trailer for a fake remake starring Mirren and Milla Jovovich.

Director: Vincent Gallo
Bedfellows: Gallo, Chloë Sevigny

The film
‘The worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival’ according to Roger Ebert (before Gallo trimmed 26 minutes from his original cut, prompting Ebert to reconsider), this meditative art-house drama follows a motorcycle racer’s cross-country journey as he’s haunted by the memory of his ex-girlfriend.

The sex scene
Our hero’s former lover (Sevigny) meets him at a seedy hotel, smokes some crack and then – very graphically – becomes his current lover. In a too-hot-for-YouTube moment, Sevigny unbuckles Gallo’s pants, unleashes his erect penis and begins to perform aggressive oral sex. Dramatically, the scene is hard to swallow, but it sure ties the film together.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
This was hardly the first time that a respected actor performed an unsimulated explicit sexual act, but seldom had it been done with such commitment, despite the potential consequences it could have had for her career. Insisting that the film should be played in museums and admitting that she and Gallo had been intimate before, Sevigny was openly proud of her involvement in the project. That first Cannes screening provoked William Morris Agency to drop Sevigny as a client, but Sevigny would soon prove she was just getting started.

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Beachfellows: Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster

The film
As the US Navy prepares to meet a date with destiny at Pearl Harbor, an upstanding officer (Lancaster) gets a in a little too deep with his CO’s wife (Kerr).

The sex scene
Their relationship reaches its onscreen climax during a day at the beach, as these two illicit paramours get freaky in the sand. There’s no actual action, just a discreet fade to black.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s not just the sight of an unmarried couple making out like a pair of slippery sea otters. The scene itself is also surprisingly steamy for classic-era Hollywood, with those skimpy costumes and all that crashing metaphorical surf.

Director: John Waters
Bedfellows: Cookie Mueller, Danny Mills

The film
There's only room in Baltimore for one person to claim the title of Filthiest Person Alive. Will it be Divine's Babs Johnson or jealous sleazoids the Marbles?

The sex scene
Cookie (Mueller) infiltrates the pink trailer and hooks up with Crackers (Mills), a taste-challenged layabout. Their sex is wild, no doubt enhanced by the presence of a live, squawking chicken that gets crushed in between the wildly humping duo.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Pink Flamingos remains one of the most controversial films ever made – particularly for a moment at the very end that has nothing to do with sex. (We won't poop on anyone's pleasure by ruining it.) But the chicken-sex scene is impossible to forget, no doubt contributing to the movie's notoriety and world-wide bannings.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Bedfellows: Eusebio Poncela, Antonio Banderas

The film
A one-of-a-kind masterpiece, Pedro Almodóvar’s sex comedy-cum-melodrama is a gay love triangle – and a prime example of his genre-bending 1980s style.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
This wasn’t Almodóvar’s first film to foreground sexuality. It was, however, his first that feels set in the real world, a linchpin between the stylized madness of Matador and his more polished later work. It may still be his freshest effort.

Director: Steven Shainberg
Bedfellows: Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader

The film
A hard-charging lawyer (Spader) hires an unstable young assistant (Gyllenhaal) who turns the tables on him in a sadomasochistic relationship conducted after hours.

The sex scene
Viewers are treated to some rather sweet body-worshipping by film's end, but most remember it for Gyllenhaal bent over a desk, slowly sliding down her panties.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Consensual dominance and submission is the undercurrent of many indie films. Impressively, though, Secretary does double duty: It celebrates the occasionally violent intimacy between two partners while somehow launching the career of a fully empowered female actor, Gyllenhaal, who's never less than confident. Eat your heart out, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Bedfellows: Lots of naked extras

The film
Stanley Kubrick’s final movie follows a wealthy Manhattan doctor (Tom Cruise) as he embarks on an unfulfilled sexual odyssey after learning that his wife (Nicole Kidman) was once tempted by a sailor.

The sex scene
For a movie about sex, Eyes Wide Shut doesn’t have all that much of it – if anything, the hero’s journey into the New York night is an epic tour of missed opportunities. Be that as it may, apparently there was still too much sex for the MPAA, who slapped the film with an NC-17. Warner Bros.’ solution? Obscure much of the iconic orgy sequence with dark CGI silhouettes. Kubrick had only been in his grave a few months, but it’s safe to assume he was already rolling in it.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Digitally altering a sex scene without the informed consent of the film’s director sets a mighty dangerous precedent. Even worse are the flourishes that future filmmakers have since agreed to: Remember Leslie Mann’s computer-generated breasts in The Change-Up? Follow-up question: Remember The Change-Up?

Director: Adrian Lyne
Bedfellows: Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez

The film
A wealthy suburban NYC couple dissolves when wife Connie (Lane) finds herself drawn to the libidinous charms of French used-books-seller Paul (Martinez).

The sex scene
The movie is loaded with illicit trysts but the sexiest thing in Unfaithful is Lane's flushed face as she rides Metro-North home, the memories of a sweaty afternoon playing in her head.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Director Lyne made his reputation with Fatal Attraction, so it's nice to see him giving the power (and our sympathies) to a noncrazy female for a change. There's also something daring about demoting Richard Gere to the role of cuckold. For her sensitive portrayal, Lane got all the way to a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Director: Russ Meyer
Bedfellows: Edy Williams, David Gurian

The film
Rocking girl group the Carrie Nations heads to L.A. to make their fortune, but the wild party scene and its attendant pleasures prove a distraction to discipline.

The sex scene
Rapacious pornstar Ashley St. Ives (Williams) puts the moves on band manager Harris (Gurian), sidling up to him in a Rolls-Royce, inviting him to the back seat and shedding her panties for some shrieky, orgiastic coupling.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Recently name-checked by a blushing Martin Scorsese in Life Itself, this Roger Ebert-scripted melodrama scores comical points for interjecting brand consciousness in the squealing (‘There's nothing like a Rolls!’). Boobs king Meyer made racier movies than this, but Dolls hits the cult G-spot.

Director: Wong Kar-wai
Bedfellows: Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung

The film
Wong won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this romantic whirlwind, starring Leung and Cheung as two Hong Kong expats living in Buenos Aires.

The sex scene
The two leads are in bed on a hot South American night. First they kiss, with an explicit passion somewhat unprecedented in the filmography of a director whose masterpieces are frequently more about longing. Then they grow mad together. It is as abruptly erotic as their relationship, rocking in bed with reckless abandon.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Leung was a huge star in Hong Kong at the time, and had never done something quite so transgressive as starring in a gay romance. Pop star Cheung, on the other hand, had not yet publicly acknowledged his bisexuality. The same year that Happy Together played Cannes, he would tell a concert audience about his relationship with Daffy Tong Hok-Tak, the man who would remain his partner until Cheung’s untimely death in 2003.

Director: Lars von Trier
Bedfellows: Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Troels Lyby, Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis

The film
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.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Planting the seed that would flower as Nymphomaniac 16 years later, The Idiots was the first time Von Trier depicted an erect penis onscreen, and the first time he spliced in stunt genitals to give the illusion that his cast was engaging in unsimulated sex (there’s only one shot of penetration and the faces of both performers are hidden from view). But it was Von Trier’s decision to co-opt the characteristics of the disabled that ultimately proved most controversial – regardless of your opinion on the ethics of the project, The Idiots was proof that the director would stop at nothing to get a rise out of his audience (and his cast).

Director: Ken Russell
Bedfellows: Oliver Reed, Alan Bates

The film
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).

The sex scene
It’s become infamous: Rupert (Bates) and Gerald (Reed) sit in a drawing room next to a roaring fire. Gerald: ‘I have a feeling that if I don’t watch myself, I’ll do something silly.’ Next thing you know, they’re wrestling each other nude, rolling on the floor and slapping each other. ‘Was it too much for you?’ asks Gerald at the end.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s not actually sex, but the metaphor is so strong it’s almost laughable these days. At the time, though, this must have seemed pretty trangressive. Russell gave us the ultimate movie bromance before anyone had even invented the word.

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Bedfellows: David Hemmings, Jane Birkin, Gillian Hills

The film
Italian maestro Antonioni’s first English-language film, about a photographer who stumbles on a murderous conspiracy, defined Swinging London for audiences around the world.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The scene is famous for being the first time British audiences got to see pubes on the big screen (yes, said hairs are exclusively female). But it’s really more about the era than the act – a moment of pure permissiveness and physical celebration marking the end of the old society and the messy, ecstatic birth of the new.

Director: Vilgot Sjöman
Bedfellows: Lena Nyman, Börje Ahlstedt

The film
A promiscuous 20-year-old plunges body and soul into sex, politics and the vagaries of adult life. Meanwhile, the film's crew grapples with the subject matter in behind-the-scenes footage.

The sex scene
Lena (Nyman) dips her head and offers tender kisses to her boyfriend's sleeping member.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Sweden's provocative export got hung up in the US court system, where it prevailed against charges of obscenity. Still, it was banned in Massachusetts and one Houston theater burned to the ground as a result of arson. Full-front male nudity remains rare in movies – unless you're Jason Segel.

Director: Just Jaeckin
Bedfellows: Sylvia Kristel and various others

The film
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.

The sex scene
It’s more the buildup of sex scenes that made Emmanuelle such a hot property. Moments of masturbation, several lesbian scenes and a shot of a woman smoking a cigarette with her vagina fell foul of the censors.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s the life the film had, and the imitators it spawned, that wins it a place on this list. Swimming in the wake of the more respectable Last Tango in Paris, it brought soft-core porn into the mainstream and lent respectability to big-screen erotica, even if most critics thought it was poorly made and questionable in its intentions.

Director: John Carpenter
Bedfellows: P.J. Soles, John Michael Graham

The film
Carpenter’s low-budget thriller about a faceless serial killer with a taste for teens may not have been the first slasher flick, but its huge success popularized the genre.

The sex scene
When chatty high-schooler Linda (Soles) and her boneheaded boyfriend Bob (Graham) get down to business in her parents’ bed, they have no idea that a killer is lurking downstairs. To paraphrase Basic Instinct, at least they get off before they get offed.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Whether Carpenter intended it or not, Halloween marked a key moment in the rollback of the ’60s dream. No longer were sybaritic, sexually promiscuous teens something to be celebrated. In an increasingly conservative era, their indecency would instead lead to an abrupt and bloody death, with only the virginal heroine spared.

Director: Crispin Glover and David Brothers
Bedfellows: Steven C. Stewart, Carrie Szlasa

The film
Written by and starring lifelong cerebral-palsy sufferer Stewart, Glover’s second film as director (here working with David Brothers) is a lurid sex-and-violence fantasy told from the point of view of a handicapped man dying on a hospital floor.

The sex scene
Paul (Stewart) may be disabled but he’s still able to get it up, as proven in the explicit scene in which he lures sex kitten Karma (Szlasa) into his bed, before wrapping his hands around her throat.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
If the sight of an erection is still fairly rare in cinema, to see a severely disabled man brandishing his broadsword with evident pride is surely unique. Glover’s film is divisive, crude and arguably misogynistic, but it’s also deeply affecting and sympathetic to its subject: Stewart died from his illness barely a month after principal photography wrapped, and never got to see the finished product.

Director: John McNaughton
Poolfellows: Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell

The film
A high-school guidance counsellor (Matt Dillon) is accused of rape by a wealthy student (Denise Richardson), a claim backed up by a classmate from the wrong side of their Floridian backwater (Neve Campbell). But for a local detective (Kevin Bacon), the facts don’t add up.

The sex scene
As it seems like their scheme is unravelling, the three principles reconcile in a motel pool, sans clothes, in a scene studiously examined by teenage boys in dark family rooms with their fingers hovering over their TV remote’s power button.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
John McNaughton’s knowingly sleazy noir was late to the erotic thriller bandwagon of the 1990s, but it was one of the few that felt genuinely hedonistic. These days, the group sex would drop less jaws than the underage student-teacher affair and false sexual assault allegation. But in its day, a wet-and-wild threesome involving a trio of recognizable stars was legitimately eye-popping. It exists almost entirely for the purpose of titillating those aforementioned teenage boys, but this is a movie thoroughly unembarrassed by its own trashiness. More films should be so bold.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Bedfellows: Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau

The film
Godard’s DIY 3-D experiment abstractly dissects the relationships between two separate couples in its effort to dismantle the conventions of stereoscopic filmmaking.

The sex scene
There isn’t any actual sex in Goodbye to Language, but one nudity-filled sequence invites so much audience interaction that people might remember things differently. As actors Chevallier and Bruneau have a conversation in the nude, Godard splits the image apart, assigning each of his 3-D cameras to its own eye. The resulting effect allows viewers to choose their own adventure, closing one eye to see Bruneau’s pubic hair, and another to see Chevallier’s flaccid penis.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Like pretty much every technological innovation invented for cinema, 3-D was eventually used to shoot sex (and much earlier than this). But Godard’s twist on it invites a unique sense of engagement, resulting in the first movie that allows you your choice of partners. At screenings, you can practically hear the crowd around you closing one eye and opening another (it’s as weird as it sounds).

Director: Eiichi Yamamoto
Bedfellows: Aladdin, Miriam

The film
Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy and a true legend of Japanese animation, cowrote this epic Arabian Nights fantasy tracing the misadventures (mostly sexual) of happy-go-lucky Aladdin, who tangles with a bodaceous slave girl, a clothes-shedding redheaded female warrior, and a whole island of naked nymphs. The psychedelic visuals suggest that hallucinogens had made their way to Tokyo by 1969.

The sex scene
Having rescued curvy Miriam from being sold to the highest bidder, Aladdin gets her alone and the animation turns extremely trippy: Think purple skin tones and lots of floral motifs.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
A mind-blowing precursor to today’s hentai subgenre.

Director: David Cronenberg
Bedfellows: James Spader, Holly Hunter

The film
David Cronenberg’s darkly comic adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel explores the subversive sexual potential in car wrecks.

The sex scene
There are a number of appropriate moments in this edge-of-madness, edge-of-genius antidrama. But the scene in which Spader rubs himself up against the stitched wound of fellow accident victim Hunter’s leg in a car park has to be the most worryingly memorable.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Wound sex. Do we really need to expound on that? Okay, fine: Cronenberg has always concerned himself with perversions of the flesh. His deeper idea, still provocative, is that we’d come to enjoy those perversions and not hold them at arm’s length. In a movie expressly about a death cult, Cronenberg weds tortured flesh with glittering metal in a way that’s unnerving.

Director: Paul Weitz
Bedfellows: Jason Biggs, Shannon Elizabeth 

The film
This chirpy high-school virgin-com follows four pals desperate to get their respective rocks off before graduation.

The sex scene
We could have gone for the scene that gave American Pie its 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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Singlehandedly delivering raunchy teen sex comedies to the doorstep of the 21st century, the visionary centerpiece scene of American Pie didn’t just cement the movie as the Risky Business of its generation, it also anticipated how the Internet would change sex forever. (If not necessarily for better. Sorry, Jim).

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Bedfellows: Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Maribel Verdú

The film
Sensual and sensitive, funny and forlorn, Alfonso Cuarón’s break-out follows two exceptionally horny teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, both also breaking out) on a transformative road trip through Mexico with an alluring older woman (Maribel Verdú). 

The sex scene
Having spent their beach trip scrambling the boys’ image of themselves and their sexuality, Verdú initiates a threesome where, in their orgiastic delirium, Luna and Bernal share a sudden, passionate kiss.

Why is it so groundbreaking?  
Well, for one thing, it literally changed cinema in Mexico – after the film was slapped with a restrictive 18+ rating, Cuarón sued the country’s government-controlled ratings board, eventually causing the organisation to loosen its political influence. Beyond that, few sex scenes manage to say so much while showing so little. It’s the movie’s climax and denouement – the moment that, as we learn in the quietly sobering coda, changes everything for everyone forever.    

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Bedfellows: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

The film
Derek Cianfrance’s hipster drama gives us the the five-year marriage between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams), moving back and forth in time, seeing how the couple came together and fell apart. 

The sex scene
In the happier early days, Dean goes down on Cindy: Gosling pulls down Williams’s panties and shoves his face in there.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Oral sex (of the man going down on a woman variety) has always been a taboo in Hollywood. The MPAA slapped a NC-17 rating on Blue Valentine for its cunnilingus scene. That, according to Ryan Gosling, was blatant sexism and misogyny: ‘There's plenty of oral sex scenes in a lot of movies, where it's a man receiving it from a woman, and they're R-rated. Ours is reversed and somehow it's perceived as pornographic.’

Director: William Friedkin
Clubfellows: Al Pacino, Richard Cox, James Remar

The film
William Friedkin’s tawdry detective thriller stars Al Pacino as an undercover cop on a mission to uncover a killer in New York City’s gay leather scene. Inevitably, he gets in too deep.

The sex scene
Before anything untoward happens to the bewildered straight-boy lead, Friedkin features explicit sex in the leather clubs of NYC’s then-infamous Meatpacking District. While the director claims 40 minutes were cut (including footage taken in real sex clubs), the finished film does include shots lifted from gay pornography.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Cruising has always had a troubled reputation and was protested by the gay community upon its release. Over the years, that tide has somewhat turned: The movie is a landmark of gay representation, despite the plot’s more formulaic gestures. Cruising’s dark mood persists in the imagination.

Director: Ken Russell
Bedfellows: A lot of nuns

The film
Russell’s enduringly controversial masterpiece revisits the severe religious hysteria of 17th-century France, where a priest is bequeathed control of a small rural city only to find himself the defendant in a witchcraft trial.

The sex scene
The local nuns, convinced that they have been possessed by the devil, are having their demons exorcised by a witch hunter. But when their psychosomatic condition remains unresolved, they promptly descend into an orgiastic fever, some of them using a giant crucifix as a dildo, commencing a sequence that has since become known as the Rape of Christ.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Russell’s defenestration of the church remains one of the most ruthless attacks on organized religion the cinema has ever seen. By using unfettered sexual mania as the catalyst for his jeremiad, Russell insured that he would whip viewers into a frenzy on par with the one he was depicting onscreen (albeit a frenzy of a different kind). The scene was cut by Warner Bros. before they submitted the film to the British Board of Film Censors, and subsequently thought to be lost – until several decades later, film critic Mark Kermode found the missing footage while researching a documentary on Russell.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Bedfellows: Eva Siva, Alaska

The film
This was the Spanish director’s second feature film and came at the height of La Movida, the cultural explosion in Madrid that followed the death of Franco. The film tells of an unlikely trio – Bom (Alaska), a punk singer; Luci (Siva), a policeman’s wife; and Pepi (Carmen Maura), a modern metropolitan woman – who hit the city’s party scene.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
This would be a jaw-dropping scene in a movie today. Take into account how deeply conservative Spain still was in 1980, and this anarchic comedy is nothing short of revolutionary in cultural and sexual terms.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Bedfellows: Kieran O’Brien, Margo Stilley

The film
A love story? Or a porn film? Michael Winterbottom’s indie romance has been called both for its portrayal of a twentysomething couple in London having sex (real-life rather than simulated) and then going out to gigs.

The sex scene
Take your pick. The film splits half and half between sex and nonsex (the latter heavy on concert footage). Possibly the most memorable sex scene is a foot job in the bathtub.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
9 Songs is the most sexually explicit mainstream ever made in the UK, with star O’Brien becoming the first man to be shown ejaculating. It caused a furor, but here’s Winterbottom, defending the film at Cannes: ‘Books deal explicitly with sex, as they do with any other subject. Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish.… Part of the point of making the film was to say, ‘What’s wrong with showing sex?”’

Director: Vasili Pichul
Bedfellows: Natalya Negoda, Andrei Sokolov

The film
Pichul’s nihilistic drama, an enduring emblem of the Soviet Union during perestroika, follows a wild Russian girl as she falls in love with a man whom her family violently disapproves of.

The sex scene
Vera (Negoda) straddles atop of Sergei (Sokolov) in a hostel room, rocking back and forth on top of him as they coolly discuss the recent lunch at which she had introduced him to her parents. Vera informs Sergei that she told them she was pregnant, and continues riding him while he tries to suss out whether or not Vera was lying to her family.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The reasons why Little Vera caused such a stir are largely contextual – the scene where a topless Vera gets into some cowgirl action with the man of her dreams flew in the face of puritanical censors. Though it’s quite chaste by today’s standards, it was considered the most blunt and unvarnished sex scene the Russian cinema had ever produced. More than anything, it’s the casualness with which Vera treats the encounter that shocks people most.

Director: The Wachowskis
Bedfellows: Gina Gershon, Jennifer Tilly

The film
Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s breakthrough film unites two women, a convicted thief and a mobster’s trophy girlfriend, in a high-wire plan to grab $2 million of mob money and head off into the sunset.

The sex scene
After some smoldering chemistry and a spot of light plumbing, Corky (Gershon) and Violet (Tilly) fall hard for each other – at least, as hard it’s possible to in a movie where no one seems entirely trustworthy. Before long, they’re naked on Corky’s mattress, out of sight of Violet’s mobster boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano).

Why is it so groundbreaking?
In the context of a thriller in which each of the three main characters is constantly calculating and recalculating, the lesbian tryst adds a extra dimension: it’s both a trip wire for Caesar’s male ego and insecurity and a weak spot for the two women. The sex, which comes early in the piece, is not male gaze-y or gratuitous, but sensual and characterful, which may have something to do with the presence of sex educator Susie Bright on set. Helping bring authenticity to Bound’s LGBTQ+ world, Bright’s involvement was just another way the Wachowskis were way ahead of the curve.

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Bedfellows: Nancy Godfrey, Jim Buckley

The film
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.

The sex scene
Most notorious is when artist Godfrey makes a plaster cast of Screw editor Buckley’s erect penis.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Buckley’s not-unimpressive member became the first ever to make it through the British film censors, though the film’s one and only UK. TV showing two decades later saw his manhood hilariously masked by superimposed animation.

Director: Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress
Bedfellows: Ken Hicks, Janusz Romanov

The film
Gay British darling Jarman, working with Humfress, retells the story of St. Sebastian on location in sunny Sardinia, entirely in Latin and with a homoerotic porn sheen lent to the whole affair.

The sex scene
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.’

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Remember that homosexual acts were only decriminalized in the UK eight years prior. Sebastiane is frank and unapologetic about nudity and gay relationships, and proudly depicts same-sex lovemaking as fun and sensual.

Director: Lena Dunham
Bedfellows: Dunham, David Call

The film
Pre-Girls, this is the film that got Lena Dunham noticed. She writes, directs and stars as Aura, a twentysomething woman stuck in that who-am-I-and-what-am-I-doing? postcollege phase.

The sex scene
They meet at work. She’s a hostess. He’s a chef and has a girlfriend. She lives with her mom. So they go to a construction site and do the deed in a giant metal pipe, doggy style. Romantic it ain’t. ‘You don’t have AIDS, do you?’ she asks when it’s all over.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Trailblazing the way for Girls, this sex is frank and honest. Lena Dunham is on a mission to normalize sex and in Tiny Furniture, it’s realistically awkward and embarrassing in a way we can all relate to.

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Poolfellows: Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan

The film
A violent drifter (Elizabeth Berkley, of Saved By the Bell fame) blows into Las Vegas, determined to climb the ranks of Sin City’s glamorous and highly competitive exotic dance scene.

The sex scene
Berkley’s Nomi Malone seduces sleazy casino owner Kyle MacLachlan in a swimming pool, then proceeds to flop around like a hooked marlin while MacLachlan looks like he’d rather be back in the Black Lodge.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
In the span of three years, Paul Verhoeven managed to single-handedly reinvigorate the erotic thriller genre, then kill it dead completely. Slapped with a dreaded NC-17 rating, it was torn apart by critics and audiences so viciously that it’d be years before anyone would attempt big-budget ‘adult’ fare again. It’s since been reappraised as campy satire – which, knowing Verhoeven, is probably how he meant it to be taken all along – but that poisoning effect remains the most crucial aspect of its legacy.

Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Bedfellows: Radha Mitchell, Ally Sheedy

The film
Mitchell plays Syd, a straight art-world ingenue who becomes tangled up in the tense emotional web of Lucy (Sheedy), a famous and reclusive photographer in Cholodenko’s debut feature.

The sex scene
A trip out of the city for inspiration leads to a late night of wine and physical connection, in which Lucy coaxes Syd through sex. The ‘first gay experience’ setup makes it lovably awkward and the performances give it beauty.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
What could feel clumsy is instead a triumph of apprehension and an almost eerie sense of foreboding (supplied by original music from Shudder to Think). It’s a confident scene, a sign of strong vision early in Cholodenko’s filmography and perhaps a career-best moment from Sheedy.

Director: Albert Kirchner
Bedfellows: Louise Willy, plus an unknown actor

The film
Shortly after the invention of motion pictures in the 1890s it was only a matter of time before some bright spark stumbled on the artform’s risqué potential. And in 1896, director Albert Kirchner coaxed actress Louise Willy to strip in front of the camera.

The sex scene
Willy plays a bride on her wedding night, taking off her clothes, while her new husband blithely reads the newspaper. This being the 1890s, there are layers of frills, corsets and bloomers to get through, so it takes a couple of minutes.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It might look tame today, but this is the birthplace of porn.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Bedfellows: Janet Leigh, John Gavin

The film
Alfred Hitchcock’s genre-defining thrill-kill flick is most famous for its unforgettable shower scene, but there’s more here than meets the eye.

The sex scene
In a film crammed with Hollywood firsts – the early death of the heroine, the suggestion of necrophiliac incest, the practical use of a toilet – it’s the opening scene of unmarrieds Leigh and Gavin sharing a bed that really got moral watchdogs barking.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The ‘offense’ here is so minor to modern eyes, today’s viewer can almost miss it. After all, this a consensual couple, nuzzling in a hotel room, neither of them nude. But for two actors to be in a single bed together was, in its own way, a quiet revolution in post–Hays Code Hollywood. Hitchcock knew he needed to supply heat and attraction to motivate the criminality to come.

Director: Lars von Trier
Bedfellows: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

The film
Von Trier’s tribute to Tarkovsky is a classic tale of parental tragedy: A young couple retreats to a wood cabin to cope with the loss of their child, they make friends with a self-cannibalizing fox, and then the woman destroys everyone’s genitalia with a rock and a pair of scissors.

The sex scene
Antichrist opens with a balletic slow-motion sequence in which Mom and Dad (Gainsbourg and Dafoe) are too busy making love in the shower to notice their young son wander out of his crib and plummet out the window to his death. But, like, the sex looks really good.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Antichrist wasn’t the first time that penetration had been graphically depicted in a theatrically released film (hell, it wasn’t even the first time that Von Trier had done it), but there’s something strikingly confrontational about the black-and-white classicism with which Antichrist depicted it. While it may first appear as though the scene demonizes the lustful mania of sex– not just any sex, married people sex – Von Trier’s stylization is eventually revealed to be the first arrow in the director’s quiver aimed at the nature of physical intimacy and its itinerant psychoses.

Director: Gregg Araki
Bedfellows: Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore

The film
Gregg Araki’s first hit is a major watermark in New Queer Cinema, a gay riff on Thelma & Louise with an AIDS-era fire in its belly.

The sex scene
Between the movie’s early comic blisses and troubling desert finale lies one memorable love scene in a cheap motel shower. Luke and Jon, both HIV-positive and on the run from the law, share an awkward but very memorable sudsy embrace.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Luke and Jon don’t use a condom. This honest, unprotected sex midway through the film, between two HIV-positive men, is the high point of Araki’s furious commitment to reckless liberation. The movie ends without happy resolution, or even clarity, but the brief outburst of near-separatist joy is revolutionary in itself.

Director: Rose Troche
Bedfellows: Guinevere Turner, V.S. Brodie

The film
Troche’s debut feature, a lighthearted and low-budget lesbian love story, won the Teddy for Best Feature at the Berlin Film Festival.

The sex scene
When Max (Turner) and Ely (Brodie) finally reach the sexual climax of their long flirtation, Troche almost skips past it. It isn’t until the two women debrief their respective roommates that the actual sex emerges, in alternately comic and smoldering flashbacks.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
More than a simple romance, Go Fish is a playful symposium on lesbian sexuality and identity. A Greek chorus of intimate discussions among friends about sex, relationships and the politics of it all punctuates the film. The sex is not only a manifestation of the desire shared by two women, but a celebration of lesbian community as well.

Director: Melvin Van Peebles
Bedfellows: Mario Van Peebles, an unnamed woman

The film
The first revolutionary work of black-American cinema, dedicated to ‘all the brothers and sisters who have had enough of the Man,’ Van Peebles’s problematic debut follows a mustachioed sex worker who goes on the run after beating up two cops.

The sex scene
Given that it features one of the most disturbing, controversial openings in cinema, it’s perhaps surprising that the film is still widely available. Growing up in a whorehouse, our young title hero earns his nickname at age 10 when one of the hookers seduces him into her bed, praising his ‘sweet, sweet back.’

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It’s a pubescent boy (Van Peebles’s own son Mario, 13, later an actor and director in his own right) having sex with a middle-aged woman. Arguably pornographic and indisputably grotesque, the scene is only acceptable (if at all) because of Van Peebles Sr.’s dedication to making the most rebellious, confrontational film he could get away with.

Director: Patrice Chéreau
Bedfellows: Kerry Fox, Mark Rylance

The film
Married Claire (Fox) and divorced Jay (Rylance) embark on a sex-heavy, chat-free anonymous relationship on a weekly basis in Jay’s seedy London flat. The film is based on a series of stories by novelist Hanif Kureishi.

The sex scene
Claire gives Jay a blow job – nothing is faked.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Intimacy caused a storm for featuring unsimulated oral sex – the first nonpornographic British film ever to do so. The film brought a no-nonsense European art-house approach to UK screens.

Director: Frank Ripploh
Bedfellows: Ripploh, Peter Fahrni

The film
A schoolteacher living in West Berlin (played by director Ripploh himself) flits between his relationship, his work life and his penchant for anonymous sex in public places.

The sex scene
Frank meets an auto mechanic and later takes him home. This leads to the kinkiest sex in the film, complete with leather and water sports.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Taxi zum Klo is a warm portrait of an open relationship, a clever juxtaposition of public life and private sex, and an oblique critique of society’s hang-ups. It’s also a time capsule of gay life in a major European city in 1980, just before the AIDS epidemic. Its explicit sex has a carefree joy due to its anonymity, its risks and its gleeful filth.

Director: Ang Lee
Bedfellows: Joan Allen, Jamey Sheridan

The film
Based on Rick Moody’s 1994 novel, Ang Lee’s frosty drama follows a Connecticut family as it breaks apart over a late ‘70s Thanksgiving weekend.

The sex scene
Sex in the swinging ‘70s of The Ice Storm isn’t a liberation so much as brief escape from suffocating ennui and a betrayal sorta-avenged. That’s what brings Elena (Allen) and Jim (Sheridan) together for a tryst in the front seat of a car.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Rarely has a movie shown bad, awkward, regrettable sex so effectively as this. ‘That was awful,’ admits Jim in a piece of post-coital dialogue you’re not hearing in any of the other movies on this list.

Director: Catherine Breillat
Bedfellows: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi 

The film
Catherine Breillat adapted this film from her own novel, Pornocracy, with intent to shock and challenge her audience’s notions of gender politics and sexuality. Despite (and because of) the ensuing controversy, it worked.

The sex scene
The whole film can be seen as one long sex scene. A woman (Casar) attempts suicide in a gay club, is saved by a man (Italian porn star Siffredi) and pays him to spend four nights with her in her apartment. The psychological warfare and emotional brutality from that point on is all one bundle of flesh and philosophy.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Breillat has put explicit sex into a number of her films, since the very beginning of her career. But Anatomy of Hell is the culmination of her approach, a distillation of her style and an insistent proclamation that sex can be more than shocking.

Director: John Schlesinger
Bedfellows: Jon Voight, Bob Balaban

The film
Jon Voight is the naive Texan in a Stetson who dreams of becoming a gigolo in New York City, certain that rich women will lavish him with money in return for sex. In reality, he hooks up with pathetic deadbeat Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman).

The sex scene
Voight is hustling in Times Square when he picks up a nerdy kid (Bob Balaban) and the two disappear into a seedy cinema. The kid gives Joe a blow job in the back row.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
This was 1969, one year after the creation of the modern rating system. At the time, the NC-17 category did not exist, so Midnight Cowboy found itself slapped with an X. It went on to pick up three Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director for John Schlesinger, making it the only X-rated film to win an Oscar to date.

Director: Maryam Keshavarz
Bedfellows: Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy

The film
Two teenage girls, growing up in upper-class Tehran, experiment with sex, alcohol and politics in Keshavarz’s Sundance-winning feature.

The sex scene
Atafeh (Boosheri) and her family take a trip to their beach house, bringing along Atafeh’s orphaned best friend Shireen (Kazemy). One morning the two girls wake up with the dawn, in a scene that’s warmly lit and set to music reminiscent of the Muslim call to prayer. They make love, then they go swimming.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
It goes without saying that a film about homosexuality in Iran is by definition controversial – both Circumstance and its director are banned from the nation. More than that, though, with its Sundance prizes and its international feel, this is a step forward for representation of lesbians in world cinema in general.

Director: Abram Room
Bedfellows: Lyudmila Semyonova, Vladimir Fogel

The film
A far cry from the politicized dramas of Sergei Eisenstein, this Soviet-era silent offers an intimate account of a Moscow ménage à trois, with a young housewife’s sexual and moral independence the key factor as her affections shift between her husband and the old war buddy who’s lodging on their sofa.

The sex scene
With hubby away, the yearning intensifies in the moments before the wife decides to cross the line with her houseguest.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
There’s no actual flesh onscreen, but when lead actor Semyonova bites her bedstead out of sheer longing, the erotic tension is palpable.

Director: David Lynch
Bedfellows: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring

The film
Lynch’s neonoir mind-bender, considered by many to be the greatest film of this young century, needs no introduction.

The sex scene
Amid the film’s labyrinthine not-exactly-plot, Hollywood wanna-be Betty (Watts) and amnesiac Rita (Harring) find a dead woman in a stranger’s apartment. They freak out and return home, where eventually the mood changes and they have sex for the first time. It’s love, it’s confusion, and it’s extremely memorable.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The choice by a significant, heterosexual male American auteur to use lesbian sexuality in a work of boldly experimental narrative is not by definition a safe one. The presence of sex between two women in Lynch’s bewildering feature is a matter of artistic purpose, rather than mere titillation or reductive symbolism.

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Floorfellows: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider

The film

A widower (Brando) and a young Parisian woman (Schneider) engage in an anonymous sexual relationship that can’t honestly be called ‘casual’, and soon goes beyond gratification into realms of dominance and obsession.

The sex scene

In the empty flat that hosts their trysts, Brando wrestles Schneider to the ground and anally penetrates her, aided by a stick of butter. It’s presented as a violation and has only become more disturbing with 50 years’ worth of perspective.

Why is it so groundbreaking?

First things first: ‘groundbreaking’ is not the operative word here. But it is hard to talk about cinematic sex without mentioning Last Tango in Paris – as much as we might not want to. At the time of its release, the movie’s perverse eroticism scandalised audiences, and it remained a lodestar for high-minded cineastes for precisely that reason. Decades later, however, revelations about the filming of its most infamous moment made an already difficult viewing experience nearly unbearable: Schneider claimed Bertolucci sprung the butter thing on her last-minute; she said the scene left her feeling ‘raped,’ and the director eventually admitted that’s essentially what he was going for. It fits the narrative, sure, but what does artistic intent and ‘authenticity’ matter when it involves actual abuse? That it now raises that question perhaps helps the film retain some import. But it’s tough to recommend with a good conscience.

Director: Michael Benveniste, Howard Ziehm
Bedfellows: Jason Williams, Cindy Hopkins

The film
This is a campy skin flick packaged as a spoof of the Flash Gordon stories and superhero tales in general. The original intention was to include hard-core pornographic scenes. In the end, a less-explicit version was released to cash in on the gimmick.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
You know you’ve truly come out of the other side of the liberated ’60s when films like this are sending up sex with free abandon. It even features a penis-shaped spaceship. And a sidekick named Dr. Flexi Jerkoff.

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Bedfellows: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel

The film
Michael Pitt falls in love with future Bond girl Eva Green, but her brother (Louis Garrel) is part of the deal, in a romance set in the tumultuous Paris of May ’68.

The sex scene
Three sexy actors get up to a number of scantily clad – and fully nude – encounters in a book-lined hothouse apartment. It's hard to pick just one scene, but a cozy bathtub conversation harkens back to Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Eva Green is such a once-in-a-generation screen siren that mere close-ups of her face can feel like the best sex scenes ever committed to film. But one moment here in which her sexpot heroine squeezes into a bathtub with her brother and their American houseguest causes a splash (heh) for how it suggests that her character is starting to lose control of her erotic drive.

Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Bedfellows: Jean-Hugues Anglade, Béatrice Dalle 

The film
Beineix’s erotic drama, a sensation when the French film first debuted in 1986, details the deteriorating relationship between Zorg (Anglade), a handyman, and the eponymous spitfire (Dalle) who resents him for not living up to his artistic potential.

The sex scene
Betty Blue opens with a bang: Zorg writhes on top of Betty, thrusting in the missionary position as the camera slowly dollies in. At this point, we don’t know who either of these people are, only that they seem to enjoy each other’s company. After Zorg has finished, his voiceover kicks in with a first line that echoes throughout the film that follows: ‘I had known Betty for a week.’

Why is it so groundbreaking?
To foreign audiences, this was a shocking and delightful way to begin a movie. (To French ones, it might have just been another Tuesday.) Béatrice Dalle’s title character is a force of nature, boldly hedonistic with undeniable appetites. And can you believe this movie was up for the Best Foreign Film Oscar? Even though it lost, it certainly helped scenes of explicit sex enter the mainstream.

📍Find out where Betty Blue ranks among the 100 Most Romantic Movies ever made.

Director: Nick Broomfield
Dungeonfellows: Maria Beatty, plus two leather-clad technicians

The film
Broomfield’s HBO documentary is a profile of Pandora’s Box, one of New York City’s premier S&M establishments.

The sex scene
There are many to choose from, running the gamut from what seem like standard fetish sessions to troubling, politically charged fantasies. The most interesting, however, is a sequence in which professional submissive Maria Beatty arrives for a personal session with two of Pandora’s Box’s dominatrices.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Fetishes is important because of the way it demystifies the world of sadomasochism, but it remains relevant because of its interest in the personalities of the women who work at Pandora’s Box. This scene is significant because it shows sex workers not simply as the fantasies of clients, but as people on their own professional journeys.

Director: Jacques Audiard
Bedfellows: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts

The film
After a catastrophic accident takes her legs, former killer-whale trainer Stéphanie (Cotillard) gathers the strength to rebuild thanks to Alain (Schoenaerts), a hunky, sensitive bouncer and kick boxer.

The sex scene
It may be hard to take your eyes off the computer-assisted trickery that erases Cotillard's limbs, but there's no denying that these well-toned lovers work their way into a lather.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The sex is hot, but Rust and Bone brews an overall attraction that speaks well to the commitment of both lead actors. It's a textbook example of using physical intimacy to convey a blooming sense of confidence.

Director: Joaquim Pinto
Bedfellows: Pinto, Nuno Leonel

The film
Pinto’s meandering mélange of art, science, biography, theory and beauty was arguably the best documentary of 2014.

The sex scene
Pinto, who has been living with HIV for two decades, spend much of the film musing on human sexuality. Still, it comes as something of a surprise when he cuts to a long take of himself and his partner in bed, engaged in real sex.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Its matter-of-factness, particularly in a doc, is unexpectedly thrilling and new. What Now? Remind Me is a seamless blend of widely scoped natural philosophy and intimate personal storytelling that gives sexuality equal standing.

Director: Marc Forster
Bedfellows: Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton

The film
As thick a slice of misery porn as has ever been cut, Forster’s Southern-fried tragedy tells the story of a racist executioner who falls in love with the widow of a man he recently sent to the electric chair. Needless to say, the film was produced by Lee Daniels.

The sex scene
Hank (Thornton) has just quit his job after watching his son (Heath Ledger) shoot himself in the chest. Leticia (Berry) has been recently widowed, and even more recently has witnessed her young son’s death after being struck by a car. He’s a bigot, she’s broke, and they both need to feel good. Hank is going to make Leticia feel good. Intercutting the sex with shots of birds flapping around in a cage – a metaphor that’s even louder than Leticia’s moans – Forster launched this sequence directly into legend.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
For one thing, it remains the most graphic and prolonged sex scene to ever feature an actor named Billy Bob. For another, Monster’s Ball convinced Berry to go fully topless (and then some) in an indie film only a few months after she was paid $500,000 to briefly show her breasts in Swordfish. For her fearless work in in this scene and others, Berry became the first African-American to ever win the Oscar for Best Actress.

Director: Sébastien Lifshitz
Bedfellows: Stéphanie Michelini, Edouard Nikitine

The film
Sébastien Lifshitz’s award-winning film is a portrait of Stéphanie (Michelini), a transgender Frenchwoman somewhat suspended in love between her two roommates: Djamel (Yasmine Belmadi), an Algerian hustler, and Mikhail (Nikitine), a Russian soldier gone AWOL.

The sex scene
Stéphanie picks up a client at a club who wants to watch her have sex with someone else. On their drive she happens to see Mikhail, and chooses him to be her partner in what begins as a completely impersonal experience.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
There are not enough films that portray transgender protagonists with respect and fullness of character. Yet Wild Side breaks ground beyond simple representation. Gender and sexuality are different things, after all. The sex in this film is almost entirely separate from love, despite the fact that the rest of its plot is essentially a plural love story. This specific scene both complicates that tension and drives it home, forcing us to rethink the boundaries of all relationships.

Director: Andreas Dresen
Bedfellows: Ursula Werner, Horst Westphal

The film
This German drama tells of Inge (Werner), a woman in her late 60s. Her marriage has lost its spark, so she starts an affair with Karl (Westphal), a man a decade older.

The sex scene
There are several sex scenes between Inge and Karl, and they’re presented simply: no music, no coyness, no nonsense.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Cloud 9 tackles head-on an unlikely screen taboo: sex between the elderly. And director Dresen does so with a minimum of fuss and fanfare, unapologetically showing aging bodies and weary flesh. It’s only by seeing it depicted so straightforwardly that we realize we so rarely do.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Bedfellows: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant

The film
In Alfred Hitchcock’s postwar spy drama, Ingrid Bergman plays the daughter of a convicted Nazi. She’s hired by Cary Grant’s slippery agent to seduce another Nazi (Claude Rains) in Rio.

The sex scene
No sex. This was 1946 after all. But Notorious features what is possibly the steamiest, most erotic kiss in the history of film.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Crafty old Alfred Hitchcock pulled a fast one over the censors. According to the rules of the time laid out in the Hays Code, no screen kiss could last longer than three seconds. Hitch instructed his actors to kiss, pull apart, kiss again, pull apart and so on, for a marathon smooch.

Director: David Fincher
Bedfellows: Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris

The film
Fincher’s pulpy thriller starts off like a missing-person mystery, only to heel-turn in the second act to reveal that Pike’s ‘Amazing’ Amy wasn’t offed by douchebag husband Ben Affleck: She faked her own disappearance in order to frame her cheating spouse for her own murder. When her plan goes awry, she reinvents herself as a sultry praying mantis targeting an obsessive former lover. 

The sex scene
Goodie-goodie Amy greets her would-be saviour – Harris’s ultra-rich, domineering tech bro – with some particularly rough after-work nookie. Then, mid-coitus, she slashes his throat, showering her with blood. She then she frames the extra-stiff stiff for kidnapping and sexual assault. 

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Fincher’s sterile filmmaking style doesn’t exactly drip with eroticism, but the moment we see Doogie Howser’s jugular drain out on his would-be lover is the most shocking mid-romp murder since Sharon Stone brought an ice pick to bed.

Director: Stefan Jarl, Jan Lindkvist
Bedfellows: Stoffe Svensson, unnamed girl

The film
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.

The sex scene
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.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The visual detail isn’t anatomical, but there’s no doubt these kids are keeping it real.

Director: Zhang Yuan
Bedfellows: Si Han, Zhao Wei

The film
One evening in a park near Beijing’s Forbidden City (the Chinese capital’s prime cruising destination), a cop arrests A Lan, one of the furtive men seeking companionship. The ensuing interrogation lasts all night.

The sex scene
The cop’s questioning of A Lan’s sexual history leads to flashbacks, in this case of a handsome teacher that he once took to bed. The sequence is the first truly explicit moment in the film – and the first time that the ostensibly heterosexual representative of the state is forced to react to images of gay sexuality.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
East Palace, West Palace was the first mainland Chinese film with an upfront gay narrative. Beyond that, however, this scene is important because of how director Zhang Yuan structures desire: His camera is obsessed with the lead actor’s face reacting to pleasure and pain, inviting the audience to identify with desire.

Director: Bruce La Bruce, Rick Castro
Bedfellows: Tony Ward, Bruce La Bruce

The film
La Bruce and Castro’s black-comedy porno remake of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., starring Madonna’s ex-boytoy Tony Ward, isn’t so much a classic masterpiece of New Queer Cinema as it is its throbbing id.

The sex scene
There are many to choose from but perhaps the most controversial is a central hookup involving a hustler with a prosthetic leg and a john with an amputee fetish.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Hustler White isn’t the only sexually adventurous film in La Bruce’s filmography; indeed, next to later works like L.A. Zombie and The Raspberry Reich, it doesn’t even seem particularly confrontational. But that’s the point: The effect of this early success is not simply to entertain and titillate, but to take fetishes and naturalize them, tossing them up against the fading Americana of Santa Monica Boulevard as good, filthy fun.

Director: Lars von Trier
Bedfellows: Stacy Martin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Shia LaBeouf, many others

The film
Danish provocateur Von Trier explores the increasingly troubled sex life of self-confessed sex addict Joe, played by two different actors at different ages. Von Trier’s epic was so long, he split it into two volumes.

The sex scene
Take your pick. The S&M scenes with Jamie Bell? The teasing, slyly comic double-penetration episode with Gainsbourg and two men? Perhaps most memorable is a parade of penises that Von Trier flashes onscreen one after another.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
As if the sight of a naked Shia LaBeouf weren’t groundbreaking enough, Nymphomaniac represented a landmark moment in the history of film sex because of how seamlessly it composited the genitals of porn stars onto the bodies of its famous cast. Offering the best use of such a technique since it was last used to graft Brad Pitt’s head onto a little person’s body in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this film might one day be remembered as the Big Bang of the digital age.

Director Steven Soderbergh

Bedfellows Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney

The film A sunlit crime caper that goes dark in the second half, Soderbergh’s Elmore Leonard adaptation pairs Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney as a US marshal and career bank robber who turn a cat-and-mouse pursuit into a seriously unlikely but still deeply believable romance.

The sex scene After an early encounter in the boot of a getaway car, Jack Foley (Clooney) and Karen Sisco (Lopez) reunite in a Miami motel bathtub. Is she going to read him his rights? Well, kinda. Okay, no. She’s going to join him for a soak – in her daydreams, at least.

Why is it so groundbreaking? The Don’t Look Now-homaging sex scene that comes (oo-er, etc) later in the film is more celebrated, but a woman’s sexual fantasy is rarely visualised as directly and with such an unapologetically female gaze as this. It’s a wonder the screen doesn’t steam up. 

Director: Marcelo Piñeyro
Goodfellas: Leonardo Sbaraglia, Eduardo Noriega

The film
Based on a real Buenos Aires bank robbery in 1965, Burnt Money is the story of two criminal lovers who met in a public bathroom and died together under police gunfire.

The sex scene
Shirtless, sweaty and still armed, El Nene (Sbaraglia) and Ángel (Noriega) find themselves immensely turned on at an incredibly inconvenient moment. Shot from above, sprawled out on the ground with their heads together, the two men become a strikingly fired-up image of throbbing sexuality in a closeted time.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The burden of representation has long been a problematic topic in queer cinema: Do we want gay criminals and murderers onscreen? Burnt Money is a resounding ‘yes’ – groundbreaking in its pursuit of honesty, however ethically compromised.

Director: Chloé Zhao
Bedfellows: Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden)

The film
Eternals, Marvel’s sprawling, cod-philosophical saga of godlike beings protecting Earth from alien beasties.

The sex scene
Finally, someone in the MCU has sex. Two people, in fact. The remarkably well-preserved centuries-old couple Sersi and Ikaris enjoy a PG tumble in a break from baddy-fighting.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Despite its major characters typically being vacuum-packed in Lycra, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is remarkably reluctant to acknowledge that its heroes have genitals or sexual urges. Even for a mostly 12A franchise, it’s an almost perversely sexless place. So in any other movie this scene would be considered purest vanilla – it’s a fleeting shot of some missionary position and a sliver of side-boob – but it’s a breakthrough moment precisely because it’s the first sex scene in cinema’s biggest ever franchise. These chaste few seconds may signal a tentative step into more grown-up emotional and thematic territory for the MCU, or they may just highlight a strange discomfort on-screen Marvel feels for this sweaty side of growing up that comic-book Marvel has never shared.

Director: Bryan Buckley
Bedfellows: Melissa Rauch, Sebastian Stan

The film
Eight years after winning the world's heart at the Olympics, chirpy Ohio gymnast Hope Ann Greggory (Rauch) has soured into a toxic, desperate mess. Buckley's comedy makes a mockery of the second-chance sports drama.

The sex scene
Hope has grown tired of watching her protégé rise up the ranks. She hooks up with a fellow gymnast and frenemy (Stan) who took her virginity years earlier. Their athletic sex is a staggering display of sweaty leaps, lunges and impossible positions.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
This so-so Sundance film busts its way on to our list via the clownish exuberance of its one brilliant scene (partly performed by a member of the Cirque du Soleil). Hope's night of pleasure rocked festival audiences and dominated sex-centric discussions over the entire festival. We give it a perfect ten on the dismount.

Director: Lucía Puenzo
Bedfellows: Inés Efron, Martín Piroyansky

The film
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.

The sex scene
Alex’s mother has invited a surgeon and his family to their beach house in Uruguay, to try out the idea of surgically ‘correcting’ her child’s ambiguous sex. The surgeon’s son hits it off with Alex, and the two end up having an unexpected sexual encounter.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Director Puenzo uses this scene to foreground how both Alex and the surgeon’s son are comfortable with Alex’s gender identity as it stands, uncorrected by parents or doctors. It’s hardly a moment of resolution in the film (or even relief), but it effectively articulates the possibility of life outside a gender binary.

Director: Donna Deitch
Bedfellows: Patricia Charbonneau, Helen Shaver

The film
Based on Jane Rule’s novel, Donna Deitch’s debut feature is a 1959-set love story that unites an East Coast intellectual divorcée and a Nevada ranch girl.

The sex scene
Well aware of what might be going on between her free-spirited adopted daughter Cay (Charbonneau) and the uptight Vivian (Shaver), Frances (Audra Lindley) kicks the older woman out of her ranch and into a hotel. Not one to give up, Cay follows Vivian to her room and eases her into a new kind of lovemaking.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Desert Hearts was the first mainstream American film to portray a lesbian relationship and allow it a happy ending. A joyous warmth beams from the sex scene, passionate but also remarkably relaxed.

Director: Anonymous
Bedfellows: Harton, other human and animal inhabitants of a desert island

The film
According to veteran Disney animator Ward Kimball, this no-holds-barred silent-era porn cartoon was made by a trio of studios working separately, though evidently dirty minds think alike. The massively endowed protagonist (think ‘Harton’ but with a d) serially humps his way from willing curvaceous female to compliant donkey and flexibly tongued cow.

The sex scene
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!)

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Disney this ain’t. A yardstick for future animated naughtiness like Fritz the Cat.

Director: Cheryl Dunye
Bedfellows: Dunye, Guinevere Turner

The film
The first American feature by an African-American lesbian, Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman stars its director as a video-store clerk and aspiring filmmaker working on a project about a long-forgotten black actress of the 1930s.

The sex scene
Cheryl’s love interest is Diana, played by Guinevere Turner. As the two women sit watching one of the old movies, Diana bluntly puts it like this: ‘Now that we know that we’re attracted to each other, what do we do? Don’t you think we should kiss?’

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Marked by a bold and direct approach, the film is about the intersection of gender, race and sexuality. This scene’s importance comes from both that added layer of politics and the striking sensuality of its images: The glistening of saliva on skin has as much to say as words.

Director: Gary Ross
Bedfellow: Joan Allen (solo)

The film
When 20th-century kids Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are mysteriously beamed into the monochrome world of 1950s TV show Pleasantville, they bring with them a whole lot of new and dangerous ideas.

The sex scene
When their fictional suburban mom Joan Allen learns the shocking facts of life from daughter Witherspoon, she runs a quiet bath and decides to take matters into her own hands.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
The idea of masturbation as an act of female empowerment may not be new, but this must be the first time a mainstream Hollywood movie not just depicted the act but did so with gusto and a complete absence of (ahem) beating around the bush. When, at the point of orgasm, a tree outside the window bursts into vividly colored flames, it’s as thrilling a metaphor for sexual liberation as cinema has to offer.

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Bedfellows: Rutger Hauer, Monique van de Ven

The film
Verhoeven’s second feature documents the relationship between womanizing sculptor Eric (Hauer) and promiscuous girl-about-town Olga (Van de Ven), from giddy beginnings, through treachery and betrayal to its final, violent end.

The sex scene
It’s free love on the freeway as Olga picks Eric up in her car and takes an immediate shine to him. However, it’s not the sex scene that’s important here, but the aftermath: Following a frank discussion about bodily fluids, Eric zips up a bit too quickly, with alarming and painful consequences.

Why is it so groundbreaking?
Along with Don’t Look Now the same year, Verhoeven’s film was one of the first to depict sex neither as a furtive act committed behind closed doors nor the pinnacle of human interaction, but as an everyday act between two carefree, consenting adults. It’s messy, joyous, honest and human, and the only real risk is of getting something caught in your fly.