Sex
Despite the accessibility of erotica, audiences still seek out the more substantial approaches to sex that only narrative cinema can offer. Here you’ll find the full array, from provocative avant-garde explorations of lust and desire to the saucy sex comedy.
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Love Rites
When Hugo meets the enigmatic Myriam on the Paris Metro, he finds himself becoming increasingly obsessed with her. Following her back to her flat, Hugo sleeps with her, but finds that his obsession has grown until Myriam seems to have total control over his body and soul. The final film of cult f...
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Postcards from London
Set in a vibrant, neon-lit, imaginary vision of Soho, this morality tale manages to be both a beautifully shot homage in the spirit of Derek Jarman and a celebration of the homo-erotic in Baroque art. When teenage beauty and Essex boy Jim (Harris Dickinson, the compelling lead in Beach Rats) arri...
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Scarlet Diva
Anna is a popular Italian film actress and aspiring filmmaker, writing her first screenplay, the semi-autobiographical project Scarlet Diva. Hurtling across Europe and America in a blur of hedonism and despair, she seeks artistic recognition while struggling against exploitation. A whirlwind desc...
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The Untamed
Part potent social drama, part tentacular science-fiction enigma, Amat Escalante’s idiosyncratic film is as difficult to categorise as it is to describe. The film opens in the opaque Mexican lowlands. Veronica is a dispossessed young woman with a curious addiction. When an injury leads her to t...
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Sexual Drive
Japanese designer Enatsu is worried about his sexless marriage. Meanwhile, office worker Akrane is preparing to return to work after a period of rehab following driving-induced panic attacks. Finally, successful advertising agent Ikeyama is looking to end his relationship. They are unknowingly co...
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Carnal Knowledge
Mike Nichols' provocative dark comedy traces the lives of college roommates Johnathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) as they navigate relationships from the 1940's into the 60's. From idealistic romances to toxic love affairs, the film charts their diverging paths - Johnathan's descen...
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You and the Night
Eric Cantona, Alain-Fabien Delon and Beatrice Dalle star in an outrageous erotic fever dream about a stylish couple, their transvestite maid and the four diverse guests invited to their midnight orgy. The Slut, the Star, the Stud and the Teen each come with their own dark and impassioned secrets,...
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Interior. Leather. Bar
James Franco and Travis Mathews recreate explicit footage cut, rumoured to be lost, from one of the most notorious gay features ever made – Cruising (1980), starring Al Pacino as a cop who goes undercover to hunt out a serial killer preying on New York’s homosexual community. Inspired by the ...
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Pornomelancholia
Lalo is a sex influencer and performer. On social networks he directs his own life, posting photos of his naked body and homemade porn videos to thousands of his followers. Yet there is a disconnect with his private life where he exists in a state of permanent melancholy.
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Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Yosuke, a recently unemployed Tokyo businessman, estranged from his wife travels to a remote fishing village after hearing rumours of hidden treasure. Instead, he meets Saeko, a mysterious woman who gushes water when sexually aroused. Enamoured, Yosuke decides to start a new life as a local fishe...
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Kelly + Victor
Kelly and Victor meet in a Liverpool nightclub and soon begin a passionate, highly charged and sexually adventurous affair. As the increasingly transgressive nature of their relationship develops, it seemingly takes influence from the illicit and dangerous world around them, from their drug deali...
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The Pillow Book
As a child in Kyoto in the 1970s, Nagiko's (Wu) calligrapher father used her body to write a birthday message in paint. Now grown up and living in Hong Kong, she seeks a lover who will use her whole body as a blank canvas. English translator Jerome (Ewan McGregor) reverses roles and becomes the s...
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Random Acts of Intimacy
What drives people to have sex with complete strangers? That's the subject of this bold and insightful film, based on interviews with five men and women who describe the chance encounters that led to impulsive sex. Director Clio Barnard uses performers to lip-sync their recorded confessions, merg...
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Rosebud
Kay moves into a new flat and finds herself unexpectedly intrigued by the open sexuality of the lipstick lesbian couple next door. Surprised and turned on by the intensity of her feelings, she sets out to change her desire into reality. An erotic tale of voyeurism, power dressing and fantasy, cla...
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Stranger by the Lake
Alain Guiraudie’s acclaimed mystery-thriller is set in a gay cruising ground in Southern France. The appearance of a handsome stranger stirs the passions of a young man, whose obsession continues even after the new arrival appears to have committed a violent crime. It’s a fascinating mix of t...
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Eros Erosion
Transience and desire, and the silence and concealment surrounding sexuality, love, death, AIDS, and the fear of bereavement, are all touched upon among a rush of abstract and allegorical connections in this artist film from 1990 by Anna Thew.
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Herostratus
When a young poet (Michael Gothard, the brilliant character actor who excelled in films such as The Devils and The Valley Obscured by Clouds) hires a marketing company to turn his suicide into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary ...
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The Wicker Man
After receiving an anonymous tip, a policeman ( Edward Woodward ) travels to the Scottish island of Summerisle to search for a missing girl. When he arrives, the Islanders, most of whom seem to be practising pagans, claim to have never seen or heard of the young girl. The mystery leads to our pro...
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Nighthawks 2: Strip Jack Naked
Made thirteen years after Britain’s first major gay film Nighthawks, Strip Jack Naked puts the earlier film into a historical and personal context, with director Ron Peck drawing on his own journey from closeted suburban teen to politically radicalised filmmaker. A lucid account of the responsi...
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Central Bazaar
For this remarkable experimental film, the provocative avant-garde legend Stephen Dwoskin gathered together a group of strangers and filmed them as they explored their fantasies over a period of five days: a project that now sounds a little like TV's Big Brother.
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Orgies of Edo
Legendary Toei director Ishii’s politically incorrect moral lessons paint a trio of tales of tragic heroines caught up in violence, sadomasochism, incest and torture. Told in anthology style by an impassive physician (Teruo Yoshida), the first story follows Oito (Masumi Tachibana), an innocent yo...
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Nighthawks
The first major British gay film, this study of a closeted schoolteacher who spends his nights cruising London’s gay clubs in search of Mr Right defies categorisation. Both a fascinating glimpse into the 1970s scene and a portrait of an ordinary gay man living in a homophobic society, Nighthawk...
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My Sole Desire
This erotic drama stars Louise Chevillotte as Manon, the newcomer to a Parisian strip club where Mia (Zita Hanrot) also works. The two become friends then something more, as director and co-writer Lucie Borleteau (Fidelio - Alice's Story) explores female kinship and desire. Her drama goes more th...