There's no denying cinematic sex has become worryingly unsexy of late. But there have always been screen clinches
that made audiences wince.
DONALD CLARKEdonned his mac to pick out the 10 worst
DOES ANYBODY still go to the cinema to become sexually aroused? Apparently you can now buy some sort of household device that beams erotica directly into the owner's home. Why would anybody bother putting on their mac and walking all the way to the Ritzy when they could just turn on their Mac (ho ho) and enjoy degrading filth in guilty solitude? No reason. This may help explain why cinematic sex has suddenly become so, well, unsexy. Last week we were presented with the gruesome sight of Michael Fassbender shagging his miserable way around New York in the powerful Shame. Next week we encounter all kinds of horrid brothel action in the ridiculous House of Tolerance. This set us thinking. What are the most unsexy (consensual) sex scenes in movie history?
10. WATCHMEN (2009)
If you weren't already sick to the bleeding teeth of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujahthen its appearance over the super-soft rumpy pumpy sequence in Zack Snyder's largely ghastly adaptation of Alan Moore's fine graphic novel ought to have done the trick.Patrick Wilson (dressed as an owl) and Malin Åkerman (the saucy Silk Spectre) couple while drifting in a pod above a computer-generated city. They'd better watch themselves. Nobody wants to give birth to something that's half-owl and half-ghost.
9. JAPÓN (2002)
A tricky one this. There is, of course, no reason why we should object to a sequence in which a young man has sex with an older lady. But, though he may deny it, Carlos Reygadas is clearly asking us to squirm when the disturbed hero of his troubling arthouse epic engages in full congress with an ancient, battered peasant woman. Ever at home to bad sex, the Mexican director decorated his next film , Battle in Heaven, with lubricious encounters between a pretty young girl and an ugly, obese middle-aged bloke.
8. MOONRAKER (1979)
Ah, James Bond. He’s a card, isn’t he? He’s always pressing his flabby jowls against blameless women with gynaecological nicknames. What do you mean “sleazy”? There are so many scenes to choose from, but it has to be Roger Moore and it has to involve an awful pun. Bond, the old devil, is on a space vessel, and has just been observed rolling around in zero gravity with (wait for it) one Holly Goodhead. Q drily remarks: “I think he’s attempting re-entry.” Eugh!
7. CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER (1974)
It co-starred Tony Blair’s father-in-law, you know. Was there ever a less sexy sex symbol than Robin Askwith? During the darkest days of the British film industry, this snaggle-toothed rickets victim drew millions to the cinema with a series of supposedly erotic films that seemed positively frightened of the act itself. We nominate the scene in which Robin and some poor housewife roll around the floor while the washing machine spews foam over their pale, sweat-free bodies.
6. HOUSE OF TOLERANCE (2010)
Bertrand Bonello’s fantastically vulgar film – set in a Paris brothel at the turn of the last century – generated hoots and boos at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The scene involving facial mutilation doesn’t quite meet our “consensual” criterion. But the sequence in which one character cries tears of pure white semen has to be seen to be believed. The most jaw-dropping adventure in metaphorical lunacy to have appeared in any recent film.
5. SHAME (2010)
It should, of course, be clarified that the sex scenes in Steve McQueen’s study of sexual addiction are meant to be repellently unsexy. By those standards, the horrific threesome towards the film’s close must be regarded as a triumph of self-disgust. Check out that shot of Michael Fassbender’s tortured face during his unsatisfactory orgasm. You don’t get that sort of existential angst from Robin Askwith.
4. LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972)
The film that convinced a million cinemagoers to switch to margarine. In retrospect, it seems astonishing that Bernardo Bertolucci’s self-important epic of spiritual flagellation was ever regarded as an erotic film. Just listen (if you can make out the words) to Marlon Brando as he threatens to introduce Maria Schneider to a willing pig. Watch as he puts Kerrygold where Kerrygold should never go. Good Lord, the early 1970s was a miserable time.
3. 9 SONGS (2004)
You know how it goes. Whenever a film becomes renowned for its sexual explicitness, pundits such as your current correspondent appear on the broadcast media to brag about how “bored” they were during the relevant sequences. But Michael Winterbottom’s stupid film – interspersing actual sex with shots of white-boy indie bands – really was stupefying dull and rather horrid. I suppose we have to pick the scene in which Margo Stilley manipulates Kieran O’Brien’s organ to, erm, completion.
2. EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)
If only Stanley Kubrick had retired after shooting the first half of Full Metal Jacket. Somebody once suggested that Vanity Fair magazine was aimed at waiters in Pittsburgh who wanted to seem urbane. You could say the same of the hysterical orgy sequence in the great man’s ghastly last film. It’s got people in scary masks. It takes place in a big house with creaking gates. It asks us to view Tom Cruise as an object of desire. The sort of teenager who still regularly gets his head stuck in park railings would feel himself too sophisticated to indulge in this class of saucy costume party.
1. TOP GUN (1986)
It's Tom Cruise again! The sequence in which the Cruiser and Kelly McGillis hump to the strains of Take My Breath Awayby Berlin stands in for every terrible, soft-core sex scene from the 1980s. All the elements are in place. Sheets are clenched. The lovers are seen in blank silhouette. The background is illuminated by the same blue shade that coloured contemporaneous teenagers' eye shadow. It all ends with a cut to the following morning. Look, a single yellow flower sits romantically on Kelly's pillow. For the following decade, all mainstream sex scenes followed this unlovely template.
