THE 50 GREATEST SEX SCENES IN CINEMA

July 25,2007
Independent Film Channel

There's a reason that any talk of sex in film comes back around to certain titles again and again. Getting two (or more) attractive actors to mash their faces together and huff and puff for the camera is relatively easy. Shooting a memorable sex scene is hard.

We here at IFC News and Nerve.com sat through a lot of movie sex to make this list — oh, we suffered through it somehow. But even after all that ranking, weighing and debating, we'd be hard pressed to define exactly what it is that makes a sex scene great — in true Justice Potter Stewart fashion, we just know it when we see it, whether it shocks us, titillates us, turns us on, breaks our hearts or confounds our expectations.

The oldest film on this list is from 1896; the newest is from last year. You'll notice we decided to leave certain standards in the field off.

50. Ken Park (2002)
Oh, Larry Clark, what oversexed minors are you discovering/exploiting this time? Ken Park's most well-known scene is the boy-on-girl-on-boy oral-sex fest toward the film's finale, and it's kind of disturbing and kind of fun. These kids are young, which makes you feel a wee bit lecherous about sitting in a theater and getting turned on amongst a couple hundred strangers who are doing the same. But what can you do? The fact that the scene concludes with a tickle fight that wouldn't be out of place in a PG movie about summer camp (were the participants not totally naked) doesn't help. But then, making us feel just a little weird about ourselves is what Clark has always been good at. — Will Doig

49. Laurel Canyon (2002)
This film's much-ballyhooed threesome isn't as pitch-perfect as Kate Beckinsale and Christian Bale's opening sex scene, all awkward and tender and on the verge of a possibly ill-conceived marriage. Bale's character is going down on Beckinsale's, following her highly specific verbal instructions in what we can assume to be a foreshadowing of their lopsided wedded dynamic. It's great when a sex scene can actually say something about the characters' inner lives and not just steam up the passenger window of a Model-T in cruise ship cargo hold. Beckinsale finally orders her fiancé to "fuck me," only to be interrupted by an answering machine from her future mother-in-law. In the end, she orgasms and then asks Bale if he came too, to which he sighs and responds, "I'm okay." — Will Doig

48. Fur (2007)
It's easy to forget the inherent sexuality of the Beauty and the Beast metaphor in these Disney-fied times — that the contrast between glamorous and grotesque generates palpable erotic friction. Fortunately, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson and director Steven Shainberg (the team behind 2002's SM love story Secretary) tease out the fairy tale in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, a whimsical biopic that renders the photographer's muse a fictional, hirsute Lothario named Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.) who introduces Arbus to a world of photogenic imperfection. Compared to James Spader's dominant persona in Secretary, Lionel brings less insecurity to the table, blindfolding Arbus (Nicole Kidman) while confidently drawing her in to his sexual universe. As opposed to to the confused, frenzied fucking between Arbus and her husband in the film, the Lionel/Diane sex scenes possess a surprising tenderness despite the kinky power exchange. Hottest of all is the scene where Arbus shaves off Lionel's fur — there is something tender yet carnal, loving yet bestial about the entire exchange — to say nothing of the powerful contradictions in Arbus' photographic oeuvre. — Jessica Gold Haralson

47. The Dreamers (2003)
Maybe it's because we live in an age where blood in the midst of intercourse can be dangerous, but of all the sundry sex acts in The Dreamers, the blood-on-the-face scene is the most memorable. (Some would argue it's the scene where the three young stars literally bathe in a bathtub filled with menstrual blood, and they'd have a solid argument — we say that's a close second). Bertolluci is no stranger to envelope pushing, and though we found this Boomer-made movie about the wonders of 1968 to be a tad preachy, you've got to give him credit for letting young, naïve American Matthew break a hymen on screen. When Matthew (Michael Pitt) then reaches up and smears the virginal blood on his partner Isabelle (Eva Green)'s face — and then her brother does the same — a sex scene that we'll never forget (for better or worse) was born. — Will Doig

46. Sex Lies and Videotape (1987)
"I've never really been that much into sex," Ann (Andie McDowell) tells her therapist at the start of Sex Lies and Videotape. Repressed and unhappily married, Ann changes her tune when she meets her husband's reclusive friend Graham (James Spader), who considers himself impotent. Graham's only sexual gratification comes from videotaping women while he questions them about their sex lives; his video collection horrifies Ann and hopelessly intrigues her. After a series of confrontations that leave them both emotionally naked, Ann turns on Graham's video camera and approaches him from behind. Boldly, she guides him to a couch and kisses him. Graham looks alarmed for a moment, then succumbs, then does something truly surprising: turns off the camera. — Gwynne Watkins

45. Breaking The Waves (1996)
"Have me now." Child-like, sweet-faced and perhaps a bit touched in the head, Scottish highlander Bess MacNeill (Emily Watson, in her Oscar-nominated screen debut) has just married oil-rig worker Jan Nyman (Stellan Skarsgård), much to the dismay of her repressed 70s-era Calvinist community. But where lies repression hides a longing for deep dickin', as Jan smirkingly discovers when his new bride leads him away from the reception, then slides off her panties from under a virginal white dress: "What do I do?" Jan's first lesson in marital duties is missionary against a restroom wall, maybe not-so-romantically perched next to the paper towel dispenser, as he then zips and leaves. In Bess' face, however, those two minutes were nothing less than a religious epiphany, her eyes sometimes locking with ours to intensify how intimately we're experiencing both her first fuck and her first of many spiritual falls from innocence. Somewhere behind a camera, Danish auteur Lars von Trier puckishly smiles at one of his more poignant provocations. —Aaron Hillis

44. Poison (1991)
Lying awake in a prison cell next to the object of his growing sexual obsession, John Broom (Scott Renderer) tentatively runs his hand over the sleeping Jack Bolton's (James Lyons) chest. Caught between fear and desire, Broom's hand tests Bolton's boundaries, tremblingly grazing his body until he receives a startling jolt of reciprocation. Shot in low light and lingering close-ups, this tender and complex evocation of homosexual lust caused a furor when Christian right group the American Family Association attacked the NEA for contributing to the film's completion, mainly due to the scene just described, another of rape, and the 15 frames of an erect penis. Thankfully the film survived intact, and it remains a striking homage to Jean Genet's "Un Chant d'Amour," the great French writer's only film, a more poetic vision of male sexuality in prison. —R. Emmet Sweeney

43. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)
After Antonio Banderas gets smacked around on a dope deal gone bad, his kidnap victim/love interest Victoria Abril soothes his hurt with the most erotic example of Stockholm Syndrome in film history. Won over by his "troubled childhood turned me into a lovable psychotic" routine, she kisses away his bruises until the pair carefully tumble into the sack. His wounds are still fresh; Abril goes hands free, wriggling underneath him until Banderas valiantly utters, "The only thing the bastards left alone was my cock." A point they go on to prove for three solid minutes: up, down, and helpfully reflected in the skylight mirror. —R.E.S.

42. High Art (1998)
After an hour of build-up between gay artsy burnout Lucy (Ally Sheedy) and straight editorial striver Syd (Radha Mitchell), including a couple of druggy kisses, their trip together to upstate New York is clearly tryst-oriented. In addition to kicking off a jag of lesbian chic in 1998 that is still going fairly strong today, Lisa Chodolenko's "High Art," rather than open itself up to titillation, plays its pivotal sex scene for low-key authenticity. Retiring to bed after a night of talking until what looks from the blue light coating the room to be close to dawn, Lucy and Syd lay themselves down with a ritualistic air that continues through the slow and uncertain but tender scene that follows. Syd's self-consciousness is touching and raw, while Lucy is patient and methodical; there are questions, tears, coaxing, confession and not much actual sex. In other words, something almost sexier than sex: intimacy. —Michelle Orange

41. High Fidelity (2000)
"We used to listen to him having sex upstairs," mutters a cowering John Cusack, huddled beneath the covers, as he conjures up an imagined scene of his ex Laura (Iben Hjejle) and their ponytailed, world music-loving former neighbor Ian (Tim Robbins) engaging in hilariously flailing, extremely moist lovemaking. Ian pulls aside fantasy Laura's lacy black underthings to reveal a heart tattoo inscribed with his name, and the two gasp and groan through different positions to a soundtrack of Barry White in what seems to be a red satin-lined boudoir. It's silly and amazingly unsexy, and yet it tortures Cusack's Rob to sleeplessness, and it's impossible not to sympathize at least a little — the scene is an exaggerated and cartoonish vision of the better, hotter sex we've all at times suspected others are managing to have, particularly when those others include someone you used to date. —Alison Willmore

40. The Lover (1992)
As a teenager having an affair with an older Chinese man, French actress Jane March is nothing short of luscious in this 1992 Jean-Jacques Annaud film. The fact that she is unknown to American audiences, while our tabloids overflow with waifs like Kirsten Dunst and Kate Beckinsale, should make the Weinsteins ashamed of themselves. Based on Marguerite Duras' erotic autobiography, The Lover is ultimately a bit of a cold narrative, exploring the sexual and racial mores of 1929 Indochina but never saying much. But the film is worth it for the heated scenes in which March, playing a role called only The Young Girl, breaks taboos with her world-weary lover (Tony Leung Ka Fai). Annaud shoots the sex in extreme close-up: the plump, wet lips barely parted, a zoom on the soft, quivering belly, nipples and ass and probing fingers. It's highbrow spank material, frankly, but who doesn't enjoy a little softcore porn? — Sarah Hepola

39. The Piano (1993)
Erotic blackmail gets a bad rap in reality, but it's hotter than Hades in fiction. That is, at least, what we take away from this mid-19th-century fable about eccentric mute Scotswoman Ada (Holly Hunter) increasingly succumbing to her neighbor George's (Harvey Keitel) sexual demands in exchange for her beloved piano's return. While this scenario might make the Andrea Dworkins of the world tut-tut in dismay, the deliciously wrong power games between Ada and George are unquestionably hot — even more so in contrast to Ada's nominally repressed, Victorianesque persona. AdaÕs nudity becomes a metaphor for her gradual sexual awakening in a time of prim propriety, rendering this film more meaningful than similar fare on, say, The Spice Channel. A sex scene that's both hot and non-gratuitous? Rare, yes — but The Piano serves it up. — Jessica Gold Haralson

39. The Piano (1993)
Erotic blackmail gets a bad rap in reality, but it's hotter than Hades in fiction. That is, at least, what we take away from this mid-19th-century fable about eccentric mute Scotswoman Ada (Holly Hunter) increasingly succumbing to her neighbor George's (Harvey Keitel) sexual demands in exchange for her beloved piano's return. While this scenario might make the Andrea Dworkins of the world tut-tut in dismay, the deliciously wrong power games between Ada and George are unquestionably hot — even more so in contrast to Ada's nominally repressed, Victorianesque persona. AdaÕs nudity becomes a metaphor for her gradual sexual awakening in a time of prim propriety, rendering this film more meaningful than similar fare on, say, The Spice Channel. A sex scene that's both hot and non-gratuitous? Rare, yes — but The Piano serves it up. — Jessica Gold Haralson

38. Shortbus (2006)
Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, and is painfully aware of the irony. When she snaps during a therapy session with a very understanding couple, her clients suggest that she visit "Shortbus," an underground performance space, salon and sex club. When Sofia walks through the door, she encounters the best orgy scene to appear on film after 1979. Piled on the floor, dangling from swings and squirming against the walls are dozens of bodies, of all genders and descriptions, screwing and licking in every possible combination. Sofia's eyes focus on one dark-haired, tattooed beauty in the foreground, who has a shuddering, very real orgasm as her boyfriend fucks her from behind. One second later, she looks at Sofia with a devasting combination of empathy and post-coital bliss. We never learn the girl's name, but we see her again in the final scene, where she helps solve Sofia's orgasm deficiency (as well as the New York City blackout). — Gwynne Watkins

37. Shaft (1971)
Gordon Parks's classic action film wasted no time in establishing the sexual agency of its lead character: no sooner had Isaac Hayes warbled "he's a sex machine with all the chicks" in the opening credits, did we see the lead character in bed, generating a fingernail-baring orgasm from his latest conquest. It was a first impression worthy of the character's iconic status. — Michael Martin

36. Boogie Nights (1997)
As befits a film about the adult film industry, most of the sex scenes in Boogie Nights are casual, unshocking — a zip of the trousers in the supply closet, two naked bodies grinding in the corner of the frame. But the one scene actually filmed for a porno, in which Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) makes his big debut, is downright touching. As a newcomer facing the ultimate screen test, Adams is nervous and boyish and eager to please. He wants to make this sexy. His partner in the scene is veteran Amber Waves, played with a brilliant mix of maternal feeling and self-destruction by Julianne Moore. She coaches him through his first time, and the scene is that much more exciting for its primness — no nudity, no sweaty body parts, all we see are facial expressions, and the flicker of tape as the reel runs out. A boy has become a man. And that man will be named Dirk Diggler. — Sarah Hepola

35. Network (1976)
Work-obsessed TV exec Diana Christensen (Best Actress Oscar winner Faye Dunaway) begins an affair with aging news-division prez Max Schumacher (William Holden), who learns that all she wants out of life "is a 30 share and a 20 rating." En route to their weekend romp in the Hamptons, Diana gets excitable over her scheduling problems for "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour" while simultaneously making out with Max. Her manic, non-stop rant outlasts their softly lit dinner, a swoony beach run back to their room and their passionate disrobing, kissing, and rolling around on the bed. On top, Diana breathily brags about getting press if the government sues her station, making her climax quicker than a 15-year-old boy. Not missing a post-coital beat, Diana launches into a soap opera pitch: "'The Dykes,' the heartrending saga about a woman hopelessly in love with her husband's mistress. What do you think?" Having never said a word and already half-asleep, Max lazily opens his eyes as if he's long been thinking: I'm as horny as hell, and I'm not going to listen to this anymore! —Aaron Hillis

34. The End of the Affair (1999)
Ralph Fiennes puts his clammy appeal to its best use in Neil Jordan's 1999 hot-to-the-touch take on Graham Greene's novel. As spurned lover Maurice Bendrix, he seethes and broods over recollections of his finished affair with the married Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), including a sequence in which the two, all but pushed together by her oblivious spouse, hurry back to her house to consummate their rapidly escalating relationship. They clutch at each other on the stairs and fall into furtive, urgent lovemaking that reaches its climax just as Sarah's husband comes home. "What if he heard?" Bendrix whispers of Sarah's unblushing orgasmic cry. Not a woman to be caught short of a quip, she replies "He wouldn't recognize the sound." —Alison Willmore

33. The Last Seduction (1994)
A woman after my own heart, Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino, possibly at her hotness apex here in 1994), can patter with the best, and never lets common sense get in the way of her raging libido. Zeroing in on a doofy local named Mike (Peter Berg) upon blowing into small-town upstate New York with scads of stolen money, Bridget sizes him up right there under the bar. Retiring to the more roomy, romantic locale of the alley out back, there ensues a scene of ghetto debauchery that — even while clinging to a chain-link fence with her legs hooked around Berg's bare bum — the slinky Fiorentino pulls off as just another night on the femme fatale clock. —Michelle Orange

32. Being John Malkovich (1999)
A randy John Malkovich greets Maxine (Catherine Keener) at his apartment door with an urbane "Shall we to the boudoir?" But alas, such sweet nothings are nothing to Maxine, who is withholding her body until her wild-haired admirer, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), slips down a portal into Malkovich's brainpan. The dead time is passed with awkward couch sitting and a dry "So...do you enjoy being an actor?" The answer is moot, as Lotte slides in, and Maxine mounts. The supreme example of fantasizing about another while screwing your boring beau, it's also a hilarious and celebratory depiction of a lesbian awakening. Maxine impulsively shouts, "I love you, Lotte!" and Lotte reciprocates with a booming declaration of her own, inside Malkovich's prominent brow. Oblivious to the blooming romance, John asks "Did you call me Lotte?", but ends up preferring climax to interrogation, while Lotte is dropped onto the side of the New Jersey turnpike. —R. Emmet Sweeney

31. Storytelling (2001)
If nothing else, Todd Solondz's "Storytelling" made me proud to be a Canadian. Seeing it in theatres in 2001, Canadian viewers were aware of the fact that the highly publicized sex scene between a bread-white creative writing student named Vi (Selma Blair) and her black power professor (Robert Wisdom) would not be marred by the red box that covered most of the action in the U.S. release. In fact, the scene is actually dirtier with the box. Vi ends up at the home of her stridently anti-white professor, and tells herself "Don't be racist" after finding a stash of white girl porn in his bathroom. What follows is a hideously funny/awful scene between Blair and Wisdom, where the professor forces his "spoiled, suburban white girl with a Benetton rainbow complex" to say "Fuck me, nigger," while he rams her from behind. About as erotic as a soggy sneaker, the scene nevertheless effectively exploits its perverse combination of deep discomfort, porny parallels, Selma Blair highly compromised, laughable subversion, and — with the red box — the guiding hypocrisy of the Hollywood ratings system. —M.O.

30. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
In seventh grade, my friend would sometimes greet me with reports on his instant-messenger sexcapades: "Check it out, dude! I was having cyber with this girl, and look — I printed it out!" But nothing in those gruesome transcripts could match one of the funniest indie "sex scenes" in recent memory, which occurs over instant messenger and can be summed up in pure typography: ))<===>((. No, we won't explain it — it's far too grotesque and hilarious for print. Rent Me and You and Everyone We Know, and you'll never look at nested parentheses the same way again. — Peter Smith

29. 9 Songs (2004)
When the average actor gets in front of a giant camera crew, heat lamps, and a director's scrutiny, sex is probably the last thing on his or her mind — or so we're told. This hardly seems to be the case with 9 Songs, the lyrical Michael Winterbottom flick about a climatologist who heats things up with an exchange student. The catch is that the film contains zero faux fucking — it's all natural, and the scene where Lisa goes down on Matt is far better than the blowjob stunt in The Brown Bunny. The critics can argue for days — is 9 Songs cinema or porn? — but we'll stay out of that one. The tingle-inducing realization that Matt's climax and Lisa's voracious enthusiasm are real is reward enough. — Jessica Gold Haralson

28. Henry and June (1990)
The first film released with an NC-17 rating, Henry and June seems as quaint as a fan dance today, but anticipation ages well. Adapted from the diaries of the infamously erotic Anais Nin (Maria de Medeiros), it's the story of a love triangle between Nin, the similiarly single-minded author Henry Miller (Fred Ward) and his wife June (Uma Thurman). Most memorable is Nin's hot pursuit of June — down a foggy street, into a hug that turns into a clinch, then into a passionate kiss on the dancefloor of a lesbian bar, then into bed. The action is conveyed mostly with eyes and fully clothed limbs, and it's a timeless portrait of longing fulfilled. — Michael Martin

27. Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Normally we don't go for sex scenes where all you see is some woman's face oohing and ahhing in alleged amorous rapture — it just seems like MPAA-inspired self-censorship. But this one's different, and it's to Chloe Sevigny's credit that she can make getting eaten out look exactly as good as it feels simply by staring at the sky and contorting her cheekbones. Knowing that it's Hilary Swank down there (done up very, very convincingly as a man) just makes it all the more erotic — and sublimely confusing. — Will Doig

26. Out of Sight (1998)
Steven Soderbergh's crime caper is a smart take on the simultaneous desire to pin someone down and lock them up. The slow burn begins in the first scene, when Federal Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) and incorrigible bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) find themselves stuffed in the trunk of a getaway car together. The extreme close-ups intensify everything, from Lopez's heavy breathing to the sound of Clooney's finger nervously tapping on her thigh. This is back before Jennifer became J. Lo and Clooney was touted as the Sexiest Man Alive, but the attraction between the two is palpable. Later on, after several coy run-ins, Jack and Karen put their firearms aside to banter over drinks in a Detroit bar. Snow falls silently outside, Jack sips a glass of neat bourbon, and the film darts back and forth between their conversation and the night's inevitable seduction scene. Motor City, the missionary position and those plastic claw hair clips from the '90s have rarely looked so slick and sultry. — Kate Worteck

25. Female Trouble (1974)
In "Pink Flamingos," drag queen extraordinaire Divine had sex with her son, so when John Waters prepped his follow-up, 1974's "Female Trouble," he knew he'd have to come up with something really disturbing to top himself. And thus Divine does the impossible: she has sex with herself, as both halves of a typically Watersian tryst: female teen runaway Dawn Davenport and male sleazebag Earl Peterson. Earl picks up Dawn on the side of the road and forces her to have sex on a soiled mattress in a dump. Somewhere between the start of the sexual assault and the start of her pregnancy, Dawn begins to enjoy it. You can just imagine the delight Divine must have taken in informing anyone who told him to go fuck himself that he'd already tried that so they'd have to come up with something better. —Matt Singer


24. The Cooler (2003)
Bad luck magnet Bernie (William H. Macy) dusts off a Sinatra LP to set the mood. "Luck Be a Lady" slinks out of the speakers until Bernie shuts the dresser drawer too hard, scratching up Frank's velvety pipes. This doesn't faze Natalie (Maria Bello) one bit, because she's the beautiful cocktail waitress who's going to turn nervous Bernie's life around. And what better way to start than with a striptease! She shifts her hips, drops her shorts, and shakes the dice tattoo on her right ass cheek. Bernie's the winner. The scene works by highlighting the nervous fumbling and resultant humor that arises with first-time lovers. Bernie has trouble undoing her singlet, but after he succeeds, he climaxes in the blink of an eye. Natalie offers him forgiveness with ineffable grace, whispering those magical words, "You've got a great cock." That's what I call love. —R. Emmet Sweeney

23. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Sleeping bag sex is awkward in the best of times, so having your first homosexual experience in a two-man tent is really stacking the deck. But the thing that makes "Brokeback Mountain"'s key sex scene so effective is its utter lack of planning. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) wind up huddled together for warmth — the gold standard of come-ons — and when Jack makes an awkward pass an angry, heated struggle ensues that morphs into some rough and urgent sex. Shot in almost complete darkness and lasting under a minute (!), the scene manages to subvert the tittering expectations of the viewing public and also offer a credibly awkward and confused rendering of how such a scenario might play out. Almost entirely dependent on sound, Ledger and Gyllenhaal make more of a couple of gasps and growls (along with a jangling belt buckle and twin zipper zips) than many sex scenes can do with mood music and the fully monty. —Michelle Orange

22. The Wayward Cloud (2005)
The very first shot of Tsai Ming-liang's avant-musical pornocopia is a wide-lensed still of a sickly lit hallway; there's no music, no dialogue, and only two women passing each other over the span of a couple minutes. Yes, adventurous cinephiles often get gushy for this slow-burning Taiwanese talent, but his film's second shot could titillate and/or scandalize just about everyone: A nubile nurse (played by real-life Japanese sex starlet Sumomo Yozakura) lies spread-eagle on a white bed, naked from the waist down. It's a gorgeous but ridiculous image, as the only vibrant color is emanating from between her legs: a juicy, half-carved watermelon. Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), last seen selling watches on the streets in Tsai's pseudo-prequel "What Time Is It There?", would seem to have become Taipei's love doctor. He crawls toward the nurse's fruit, his tongue lapping at her seed, his prodding fingers getting stickier, the room filling with squishy noises — wait, is there or isn't there a melon? After she comes, Hsiao-Kang sticks a vagina-sized chunk of drippy pulp in her mouth, a bright-pink money shot to the safest sex known to man... or horticulture. —Aaron Hillis

21. The Kiss (1896)
The listing in the Edison films catalog reads "They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time." Boy, do they ever. When May Irwin and John Rice reenacted an 18-second kiss (and kiss and kiss and kiss) from the end of the play "The Widow Jones" in early 1896, it hit the early film world with the force of a bomb. The popularity of the serial smooches (to say nothing of the ensuing scandal) ensured that the development of movies would forever be linked with the development of people getting it on in the movies. In some ways, these are the most important 50 feet of film ever printed. —M.S.

20. Bound (1996)
In this early effort by the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix, V for Vendetta), two women fall in love and connive to steal $2 million from the mafia. Jennifer Tilly plays Violet, a femme fatale in pencil skirts and red lips — a Vargas painting come to life. Gina Gershon's ex-con, Corky, is more masculine: smooth, defined triceps and delts, lips thick with snarl. The two meet when Violet accompanies her mobster boyfriend to an apartment building where Corky is working as contractor. Early in the film Violet places Corky's hand on her breast and then between her legs, saying, "I'm trying to seduce you," but Violet's boyfriend comes home before she can complete her conquest. The film's best-known scene was shot in a single take: the women lie on a mattress in Corky's unfinished apartment, the camera lingering on their lips and breasts, hovering behind and above the couple as Violet uses her hand to bring Corky to orgasm. Portrayals of lesbian lovemaking often fail to emphasize hands, an oversight corrected by the film's "sex consultant," Susie Bright. -- Sarah Harrison

19. Sex and Lucia (2002)
A babbling, whimsical love story about a Madrid waitress and her ill-destined novelist lover, a magical, ethereal quality permeates the film — the fate of its characters is ineffably linked to the moon and the tides — and features heavily in its sex scenes. The film cuts to the chase: it opens with Lucia (Paz Vega) and Lorenzo naked in the moonlit ocean, intertwined. Even if the rest of Sex and Lucia doesn't make much sense, you won't care — you'll be too busy watching Lorenzo and the intensely erotic Lucia, or Lorenzo and other-woman Elena (Najwa Nimri). -- Jessica Gold Haralson

18. Unfaithful (2002)
Spelling out the overt sex appeal of an Olivier Martinez/Diane Lane cinematic tryst isn't difficult, particularly when notoriously erotic director Adrian Lyne is behind said coupling. Yet Unfaithful's sex appeal doesn't lie in Olivier's chiseled abs or Diane's cougar street cred. The film continuously raises the stakes between Diane Lane's philandering character and her devil-may-care foreign paramour; the sex gets hotter as it gets more likely that Lane will be caught en flagrante delicto by her suburban colleagues. This is most evident in the scene where Lane is lunching with married girlfriends, and Martinez slips in to screw Lane silly in an open bathroom stall. "I have friends out there," Lane whispers, to Martinez' chagrin — he's having none of her qualms, pushing her upright against the creaky wooden door. When Lane re-emerges flushed and giddy after their bathroom quickie, her girlfriend tells her, "You have a button undone." It's a sly wink to the audience. If Unfaithful is wrong, you won't want to be right. -- Jessica Gold Haralson

17. Body Heat (1982)
Ned (William Hurt) is getting restless in his small Florida town — until he becomes infatuated with gorgeous, unavailable Matty (Kathleen Turner). Their flirtations are witty and charged, yet Matty rejects his every advance, finally throwing him out of her house and locking the door. As she stands in the doorway, challenging him, Ned tries every locked doorknob, then grabs a chair from the porch and smashes it through a bay window. This time, Matty is too excited to reject him; as she whispers encouragement, he pulls up her bright red skirt, removes her panties and makes love to her on the carpet, right in front of the broken window. Soon, their obsession will twist into something much darker — but at this moment, it's steamier than a Florida heat wave. — Gwynne Watkins

16. Coming Home (1978)
The story of a conservative military wife (Jane Fonda) attracted to a paraplegic Vietnam veteran (Jon Voight), Coming Home broke ground for political — and sexual — frankness in cinema. Voight's character, though paralyzed, gives Fonda's character her first orgasm through oral sex, a moment ecstastically enacted in close-up by Fonda. "I thought, maybe this is a way to redefine sexuality, sensuality; and make it less about genitalia and thrusting and be about what women know really matter, which is when the man is really sensitive to what we need," said Fonda in 2005. "For the day, it was a hot scene, wasn't it?" Fonda and Voight both won Oscars; their fearlessness during this now-iconic scene illustrates why. — Michael Martin

15. Get Carter (1971)
Phone sex is rarely played for anything more than laughs on film — it's hard to make something so based on solitude and the thrill of the moment look less silly when presented for all to see. But when Michael Caine's titular gangster dials up his London-based mistress (a lingerie-clad Britt Ekland) in Mike Hodges' nihilistic 1971 crime drama, the two generate plenty of long-distance heat and nary a giggle. Maybe it's that Caine seems remains so unruffled as he gets Ekland all worked up with a gravelly monologue. Maybe it's that we know from the get-go that Ekland's the property of his boss, played by Terence Rigby, who interrupts the conversation by barging in at the end, prompting Ekland to breathlessly inform him that she's "just doing her exercises." Or maybe it's that Caine does his end of the talking by way of the only phone in the house in which he's rented a room — in the parlour, with his landlady sitting a few feet away in a rocking chair, turned away but obviously listening in. —Alison Willmore

14. Team America: World Police (2004)
Even with the cuts Trey Parker and Matt Stone had to make in order to secure an R-rating (the unrated DVD restores the sorely missed puppet defecation money shot), the infamous marionette sex scene in "Team America: World Police" is easily one of the most graphic in movie history. The sequence serves two purposes in the film: to mock the fact that these puppets can do all kinds of stuff the MPAA would never let humans do onscreen; and to pad the film with material so obviously and childishly filthy (like, oh, I don't know, puppets pooping on each other, for example), that the aforementioned censors would be so focused on removing it that they wouldn't notice the other, more subversive material slipping right under their noses. Despite all their positions and thrusting and mouth-to-ass action and such, the puppets still don't have any genitals to speak of — no doubt Parker and Stone's ultimate commentary on the pathetic state of the Hollywood sex scene. —Matt Singer

13. Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
In between tequila shots on the beach, Luisa (Maribel Verdú) critiques Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch's (Diego Luna) lackluster skill in the bedroom. (The culprit? Too much jacking off.) Intending to set them right as a favor to their future fucks, she induces them back to their cabin with a knee-bendingly erotic dance by the jukebox, Cuaron's camera tracking her as if hypnotized. Back inside, the two teens throw off her dress and plant sloppy kisses. Ever the teacher, Luisa calms them, and then goes down on them, her head sliding just out of frame. Julio and Tenoch's faces turn to rictuses of pleasure, so much so that they turn to each other, and kiss. There's no intent to prove that they're gay, just that they love each other, and that a good blowjob dissolves all arbitrary prejudices. —R. Emmet Sweeney

12. The Night Porter (1974)
Vienna, 1957. Said night porter (Dick Bogarde) and a married hotel guest (Charlotte Rampling) are damned (see them also in: "The Damned") to repeat their past after locking eyes for the first time in years. You see, he's an ex-Nazi torturer and she's a concentration camp inmate who survived by becoming his sex slave; the lovebirds have reunited. Apparently, the couple that steps in glass together, stays together, as the two are soon compulsively playing out roles in a depraved S&M romance/codependency that reaches its most memorably primal state near the end of the film. Finally too dangerous to leave Bogarde's apartment (war criminals trying to kill them and all), the two have both become victims of isolation and hunger. In bed, Rampling eyes their last jar of strawberry marmalade on the nightstand, grabs it, and gobbles by the handful. Bogarde restrains her arm, the glass falls and breaks, and Rampling dives for the food like a wildebeast. She eats teasingly, they grapple, he cuts her face with the broken jar, they lick each other clean, and then she rides him while manhandling her. Can't you see why they're made for each other? Jawohl. —Aaron Hillis

11. Ecstasy (1933)
Child bride Eva is married off to an older man who turns out to be uninterested in her physical charms — a fell blow indeed, when the charms in question are those of Hedwig Kiesler, just a few years shy of being rechristened Hedy Lamarr and finding her place as one of Hollywood's great beauties. Fortunately, an impulsive skinny dip in the lake one day has her meeting cute with virile laborer Adam (Aribert Mog), who she later can't get off her mind. Having paced away half the night, she eventually goes off to find him, and the two come together for what is likely the first sex scene in non-pornographic film — his head slides out of the screen, and the camera closes in on Lamarr's face as it trembles in the passions of the film's title (an expression that director Gustav Machatý apparently provoked by poking Lamarr in the ass with a safety pin). All this, in 1933! "Ecstasy" was considered such a transgressive commodity that when the film was first imported to the U.S., customs agents burned it. —A.W.

10. Young Frankenstein (1974)
Madeline Kahn is saving herself for her wedding day — much to the chagrin of her hard-up fiancé — when Frankenstein abducts her, spirits her away to the forest and tries to force himself upon her, only to find that she's all too willing. "No!" she cries. "I'm not that kind of girl!" Until he exposes himself and she let's slip the "woof" that says everything. Mel Brooks makes up for the fact that you don't get to see any of the action with more one-liners crammed between foreplay and post-coital cigarette than one would think possible. Kahn, as always, knocks weird and sexual off each other like a squash pro. "Seven always has been my lucky number," she says as Frankenstein moves in for another round. "You're incorrigible, aren't you? My little zipperneck." And when she breaks into song — "Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you!" — in her warbling soprano just as the monster enters her, you can see why people like our parents say the old black-and-whites were sexier. — Will Doig

9. The Big Easy (1987)
True chemistry is underrated, or at least difficult to find, in cinematic pairings. In this story of an uptight district attorney investigating — and falling for — a morally ambiguous cop, Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid have no shortage. Their sex scene is one of the most natural and steamy ever filmed, with its awkward stop-and-start pacing and penchant for dialogue over heavy breathing, illuminates and elevates the idea of the chase. Barkin and Quaid are either even better actors than they're given credit for, or they had a lot of fun off set.

8. Secretary (2002)
The elicit sexual relationship between obsessive-compulsive attorney Edward (James Spader) and his shy young secretary, Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal), is a feast of mind games, humiliation, bondage and beatings. But both of them seem afraid to actually touch one another — until Secretary's revealing climax, where all the tension they've built up is finally released. Lee has just abandoned her wedding to another man and undergone a strenuous test to prove her devotion to Edward. Edward, satisfied that she loves him, carries her exhausted body to a hidden room in his law office, where he removes her wedding dress, bathes her in a cast-iron tub, and makes love to her on a grass-covered (yes, grass-covered) bed. It's the first time we see the tenderness beneath Edward's controlling manners, the first time Lee is comfortable exposing her scarred, naked body, and the first time we realize that these two crazy kids are actually gonna make it. — Gwynne Watkins

7. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
"Love in a Laundromat" should have been an Aerosmith song, if only because of this scene. At a time when gay rights was a bizarre fringe issue, Daniel Day-Lewis played a mod British punk with a Vanilla Ice hairdo who screws his Pakistani business partner in the office of their new wash-and-fold. Except that to say that they simply "screw" doesn't do it justice — it's nearly impossible to make filmic lovemaking genuinely romantic and holy-mother-of-God hot, but there it is. I don't know what's sexier: the shirt-removal-with-necktie-in-place disrobing, or the drinking of Champagne from one another's mouths (and if you think this sounds a little gross, I'm begging you: Try. This. At. Home.) After more than two decades this scene still holds up better than most gay sex scenes that are made today, which tend toward lewdly squirm-worthy or boringly safe for mass consumption. God, I love the '80s. — Will Doig

6. Betty Blue (1985)
One of the nakedest, craziest movies in a category that has never lacked for nude infirmity, the French romantic drama Betty Blue presents one of cinema's most combustible couples: the novelist Zorg and his doomed paramour Betty. Beatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade spend most of this movie nude (in Dalle's case, nude and/or going berserk), and the opening scene, depicting a good minute of Dalle's shrieking, shoulder-gnawing orgasm beneath Zorg, is a fitting intro. Dalle struts, pouts, giggles and freaks as if the idea of the volatile siren were invented for her; despite the emotional pyrotechnics and downer ending, the film's unabashed sensuality and passionate advocacy of passion make it a turn-on for the ages. — Michael Martin

5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
Though it's less overtly sexual than the famous scene involving mirrors and a bowler hat between free lovin' Sabina (Lena Olin) and physician Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), there's a strong argument to be made for the superior, complex sensuality of the encounter shared by Sabina and Tomas' timid wife Tereza (Juliette Binoche). Fascinated and wounded by the idea of her husband's lover, Tereza is drawn to Sabina as image and then as woman. Their meeting is a gorgeously conceived and shot sequence in which the photographer Tereza takes some nude photos of Sabina, Binoche's eyes welling with a mix of emotions that defy description, before Sabina takes the camera herself. In almost complete silence, the women negotiate each other as women, then as subjects, and objects, the camera a sort of stand-in for the absent Tomas. The sequence of Olin tugging down the failingly reluctant (and topless) Binoche's underwear for her own nude photo session is a marvel of direction, tone and performance. --Michelle Orange

4. Risky Business (1983)
If you've never seen "Risky Business" and all you know about it is the oft-clipped bit where Tom Cruise dances in his briefs to the sounds of Bob Seger, you're in for a shock. This movie is as explicit and downright sexy as any in Hollywood history; no scene more so than the first encounter between Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay's Lana, a classic Hollywood prostitute (i.e. she's gorgeous, aroused, in no way afflicted by STDs). The sex is intentionally dreamlike: Cruise's Joel calls Lana and passes out on the couch while waiting for her to arrive. He awakes to find her slinking into his living room. Before you can say "Hey, she forgot her underwear!" the two are going at it in front of a pair of glass doors that open ever so suggestively in time with their lovemaking. As legend has it, Cruise and De Mornay were in the midst of becoming a real life couple during shooting, and the chemistry comes across big time. It's a shockingly hot moment, especially for a guy wearing tighty whiteys. --Matt Singer

3. Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Highly unscientific research polls were conducted amongst friends, colleagues and strangers to clarify which sapphic showdown is "the greatest" from David Lynch's noir-subverting, latter-day masterpiece. For some, it's the tender first time between Hollywood amnesia victim Laura Elena Harring and the fresh-off-the-plane actress helping to solve her mystery (Naomi Watts), as they share a bed after a traumatic afternoon. Harring slips off her new blonde wig, then her robe, and just the lingering stillness of her twin peaks feels like a tease. Half-under the sheets, a kiss on the forehead goodnight becomes a pause of knowing lust, lez-be-friends soon tonguing and grabbing at each other for dear life. Watts is wide-eyed: "Have you ever done this before?" "I don't know," replies an honest Harring, "have you?"

Definitely hot, but points lost for the digital blurring out of Harring's genitals, even if to appease censors. The film's real blood-racer is such a left-field eruption of pure, palpable sex that it's as potent as the first time: Watts, her life now a dingy-bathrobed failure, makes a depressing cup of coffee (certainly not Lynch's new blend!). She strolls to the sofa, revealing a topless Harring -- what the fuck? In the reverse shot, Watts has on only denim cut-offs, her coffee mug now a cocktail. "You drive me wild," purrs Harring, before telling her straddling partner that they "shouldn't do this anymore." Watts stares her down and fingers her inland empire violently until Harring pushes her away. But what does it all mean, Mr. Lynch? --Aaron Hillis

2. A History of Violence (2005)
By the time humble, happy marrieds Tom (Viggo Mortensen) and Edie (Maria Bello) have violent sex on the stairs of their house, we've already seen them do it once. Earlier in the film, they'd acted out a few teenage fantasies while Edie wore a cheerleader outfit. Even though the scene contains what director David Cronenberg's been told is the first onscreen instance of 69 in an American film, the exchange is sweet and innocent, almost virginal. When they hook up again, the couple's veneer of wholesome Americana has been shattered and Edie's learned that Tom is really a mobster-in-hiding named Joey. She slaps him and he grabs her and the two begin to fight on the stairs (a locale loaded with symbolic meaning for a couple in transition). Very quickly, the wrestling turns to brutal, combative sex. In his DVD commentary, Cronenberg notes, "It was a physically difficult scene to shoot and an emotionally very difficult scene to shoot. We wanted to suggest that she's attracted and repelled by Joey, and she's still looking for the Tom that's in this creature." It's a credit to Cronenberg's direction and his actors' talents that all of that comes across in their impassioned faces and moans of ecstasy and screams of pain. It's a sex scene that's erotic and disturbing and it actually tells us something about the characters in it. In other words, it is perfect. --MS

1. Don't Look Now (1973)
The love scene in "Don't Look Now" was a late addition, conceived of when director Nicolas Roeg decided that something was needed to balance out all of the fighting between the couple played by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Allan Scott's screenplay. And so he added what turned out to be the most tender, most emotionally complex, and yes, hottest sex scene on celluloid. Not the first thing you'd expect from a horror film, or, for that matter, from Sutherland, but the scene, which represents a kind of détente in a marriage strained by the recent loss of a child, is justifiably famous -- a portrait of a couple both intimately familiar with and in the process of rediscovering each other.

Christie and Sutherland start out in the bathroom -- she's in the bath, teasing him about encroaching love handles as he dawdles around in the buff. Later, lounging on the bed, they exchange kisses that lead to poignant, unplanned lovemaking, the scene intercut with shots of the two dressing for dinner afterward. In an interview with the Guardian, Sutherland suggested that the editing relieved any confrontational sense of scopophilia: "The audience never ended up being a voyeur, they watched a cinematic collage and were reminded of themselves." But more than that, it all serves as a compelling rebuke of that old Hollywood standard for love scenes: the clinch that leads to the fade to black. "Don't Look Now" is a reminder that everything that's commonly omitted in movies and represented by a quick cut or a flash of darkness is just as much a part of the story, and of life, as the conversations and confrontations that follow. --Alison Willmore