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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Amateur
Isabelle is a former nun living in New York, earning a living writing erotic fiction while awaiting her higher calling. She meets Thomas, an amnesiac unaware of his past as a ruthless pornographer, once responsible for turning his young wife, Sofia, into the world's most notorious adult star. As ...
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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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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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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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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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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...
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A Call Girl
Having grown up in small-town Slovenia, 23-year-old English student Alexandra moves to the capital, embracing all the excitement and anonymity the big city has to offer. She styles herself into a mid-level call girl, selling her soul in exchange for a view from above. But as her new life inside h...
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Saint-Narcisse
The latest work from cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce follows Dominic as he tracks down and uncovers his family secrets, discovering he is not the orphan and only child he believed he was. When he finds his identical twin in a remote monastery under the control of an abusive priest, destiny brings to...
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Blind Beast
Blind Beast is a masterpiece of erotic horror that explores the all-encompassing and overwhelming relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits, with maestro director Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi) conjuring up a hallucinogenic dre...
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Perversion Story
George Dumurrier (Sorel), a doctor based in San Francisco, is accused of murdering his wife (Marisa Mell) to solve his extramarital and financial affairs. When he and his lover run into her doppelgänger Monica at a high-class strip club, he is both shocked and beguiled, but desperate to uncover t...