"Prestige Sleaze" at SIFF Cinema: Jun 9 - 26 | "The Wet Dreams and Twisted Politics of Erotic Thrillers" | The Criterion Collection

Such is the cultural moment that films are susceptible to receiving a prohibitive MPAA rating, trigger warning supplied by the exhibitor, editing of material by the director, or outright retraction of a film by its distributor in response to poor reception at festivals and preview screenings due to depictions of sex and the interpreted politics of on-screen gender relations. For deeper reading on these trends, Catherine Shoard's editorial for The Guardian, "Cut! Is This the Death of Sex in Cinema?", and Christina Newland's "The Pleasure Principle" for Sight & Sound tackle these issues, and their origins, in all of its complexity. Newland speaks further on the subject in the pages of Sight & Sound; "It’s possible that a combination of factors, both culture-wide and industry-specific, have contributed to this odd moment of both the avoidance of and a fixation on sex acts on screen. Initial hesitation around on-set safety post-MeToo, and a sense of discomfort around sensitive topics, has perhaps been fueled by social media pearl-clutching and a Gen Z backlash against the idea of ‘sex-positive’ feminism". The latter is supported by recent statistics, like those highlighted in NPR's coverage "Gen Z Wants Less Sex in Their TV and Movies" of the UCLA study, which featured such descriptors as the content being found, "Icky, Pointless, and Invasive", wherein half of those polled were, "Turned Off by Onscreen Sex". It's no surprise then, that in various statistically supported articles in The Guardian, Generation Z are shown to be having less sex, meeting fewer new people, they are the most rejected generation, and the loneliest generation. Shoard's piece for The Guardian illustrates over numerous observations and citations, the reasons for this being concurrently made complicated and narrow-minded by the two sides of a polarized political landscape. Wherein sex has become that much more weaponized in its entanglement with identity and representation, and the discomfort experienced by audiences who feel their identity politics not complimentarily represented defines no small part of their enjoyment, or even acceptance, of thematic and psychological content in fiction. In the eyes of a currently influential constituency, for whom artistic merit must be allied to a certain branch of moral and political virtue, there are vast realms of the erotic, suggestive, and sexual material on screen that will not pass such demands. Regardless of said material's honesty in representing the complexity of these matters in relation to life.

This month, SIFF Cinema is putting this to the test. Assembling an array of films which are forcibly sex-forward, drawn together largely from the 1980s and 1990s abundance of erotic thrillers and provocatively flirtatious crime dramas, "Prestige Sleaze" runs the month of June at The Egyptian Theatre. Plumbing the heights and depths of kink, subversion, and thrillingly uncertain socio-sexual outcomes between men, women and otherwise, the stakes are high in these boundary pushing films which are largely culled from the decade of the Erotic Thriller micro-genre. The pleasures, and flirtatious unease of the genre was given due consideration on The Criterion Channel last year, with their Erotic Thrillers showcase, and analysis of the cultural moment which produced these films in, "The Wet Dreams and Twisted Politics of Erotic Thrillers" for The Current. Framed by their Erotic Thriller Week, The Vulture hosts Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This series, in which she inquires; “Why did genres like the erotic thriller, body horror, neo noir, and the sex comedy flourish in the 1980s and 90s, what was happening culturally that made these movies possible and popular, and why did Hollywood stop taking sex seriously?" Writing on "Why I Love Erotic Thrillers", Abbey Bender notes in the New York Times, that they were initially a product and response to the Reagan era, a time; “Which was politically conservative, yet culturally trashy. These films fruitfully explored this contradiction, and by the 1990s, they were certified box-office gold. They distilled the excesses and anxieties of yuppie culture into psycho-sexually messy yet stylized commercial products, before fizzling out in the aughts. Building on the moody, femme-fatale-filled world of classic 1940s and 50s film noir, the erotic thriller was always gloriously excessive, with a laser-sharp focus on beautiful women doing bad things. In films like "Basic Instinct", "Fatal Attraction", and "Body Heat", the calculated performance of self-assured femininity inspires fear, arousal, and awe in equal measure."

Part of the thrill of watching these erotically charged films from the Reagan and post-era, is that the sexual politics are the most perverse thing about them. Though the films delight in their explicit sex scenes, and raunchy suggestion, they often express a paranoid and conservative perspective in their values. This paradox itself is what lends them their edge. And though they centralize the femme fatale as the motivator and focus of the narrative frisson, the movies are more often than not, about male anxieties. Every twist sinks the plots into deeper levels of their protagonist’s masculine unease, paranoia and doubt, as they navigate inceasingly unstable psycho-sexual territory. These themes are literally explored in Brian De Palma's "Body Double", as a meta-thriller vehicle to challenge audiences, as well as the conservative attitudes of the MPAA. Pushing the boundaries further, and accentuating the paranoia and unmooring of the male psyche, provocateur William Friedkin masterfully captured popular culture's uncertainty surrounding queer subcultures in "Cruising". Conversely, Alain Guiraudie offers a very modern perspective on homosexual psychological tensions in "Stranger by the Lake", and an example of charged modern heterosexuality can be seen in Jane Campion's "In the Cut". By turns elegant, tragic and erotic, Tony Scott's "The Hunger" looked to make the vampire genre one worthy of 1980s arthouse consideration, and from the late 1990s, the greatest height of unsease offered in the series can be found in the chilling void-space, where empathy has been inverted by J.G. Ballard's novel of the same name. David Cronenber's exploration of the novel's themes of society's inhibitions erupting in the deviant behavior and fatalism of an underground society of obsessed sybarites, where machinery, appendages and injured psyches, all collide together in “Crash”. So singular is it, that Criterion Collection's Jessica Kiang sees the novel and its adaptation as a head-on, smash-up, "Crash: The Wreck of the Century".

Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" and Ira Sachs' "Passages" Streaming on Mubi and at SIFF Cinema: Dec 14 - Jan 4 | "The Pleasure Principle" | Sight & Sound

As a follow-up to Catherine Shoard's 2019 editorial for The Guardian, "Cut! Is This the Death of Sex in Cinema?", Christina Newland's "The Pleasure Principle", for Sight & Sound tackles the newest Ira Sachs film, "Passages", which received an NC-17 rating in the United States due to its honest and frank depictions of sex. Such is the cultural moment that a prohibitive MPAA rating, trigger warning supplied by the exhibitor, or outright retraction and editing of material in response to poor audience reception of on-screen sex is not unheard of. Shoard's piece for The Guardian illustrates over numerous observations and citations, the reasons for this being concurrently made complicated and narrow-minded by the two sides of a polarized political landscape. Wherein sex has become that much more weaponized in its entanglement with identity and representation, and the discomfort experienced by audiences who feel their identity politics not complimentarily represented defines no small part of their enjoyment, or even acceptance, of thematic and psychological content in fiction. In the eyes of a currently influential constituency, for whom artistic merit must be allied to a certain branch of moral and political virtue, there are vast realms of the erotic, suggestive, and sexual material on screen that will not pass such demands. Regardless of said material's truth or honesty in representing the complexity of these matters in relation to life. In the case of the Ira Sachs film, what followed was an outcry in response from the domestic distributor, Mubi, and the film's director, "Director Slams MPAA Decision as ‘Cultural Censorship that’s Quite Dangerous’". Sachs speaks with Newland for the British Film Institute on the rating and the cultural and political moment that his film has navigated; "It’s really about a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling, in such extreme ways, the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist”. NC-17 movies have gotten lots of attention in recent months thanks to the release of Andrew Dominik's "Blonde" a Marilyn Monroe biopic that scored Ana de Armas an Oscar nomination for best actress, and "Infinity Pool" which director Branden Cronenberg re-cut so that it could be released with an R rating. Sachs did no such thing with "Passages"."

Newland continues in the pages of Sight & Sound; "It’s possible that a combination of factors, both culture-wide and industry-specific, have contributed to this odd moment of both the avoidance of and a fixation on sex acts on screen. Initial hesitation around on-set safety post-MeToo, and a sense of discomfort around sensitive topics, has perhaps been fueled by social media pearl-clutching and a Gen Z backlash against the idea of ‘sex-positive’ feminism." The latter is supported by recent statistics, like those highlighted in NPR's coverage "Gen Z Wants Less Sex in Their TV and Movies" of the UCLA study, which featured such descriptors as the content being found, "Icky, Pointless, and Invasive", wherein half of those polled were, "Turned Off by Onscreen Sex". Nonetheless, two high profile sex-positive arthouse films are endeavoring to contradict these trends. They arrived this year in the form of the previously mentioned "Ira Sachs Thorny Love Triangle Drama", and "Emma Stone's Sexual Adventure in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Virtuoso Comic Epic". Winning major awards at Venice and Sundance, and garnered notable praise in the cinephile press, the artists involved have made their stance in relation to on-screen sex very clear, with "Adèle Exarchopoulos: ‘Film Shoots are Like Little Summer Love Stories’, and "Lanthimos’s Poor Things Fuels Speculation of Sex Scene’s Return to Cinema". At the press conference in Venice before the film's premiere, Yorgos Lanthimos posed the question; “Why is there no sex in movies? It was a very intrinsic part of the Alasdair Gray novel itself, her freedom in everything, including sexuality”, Lanthimos said of the film’s sex scenes. He added: “It was very important for me to not make a film that was going to be prudish because that would be completely betraying the main character. We had to be confident Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes, and she understood that right away". In this tale of Emma Stone's recently reawakened Bella Baxter, Lanthimos draws on traditions from classic European cinema like Georges Franju’s "Eyes Without a Face", obvious references from gothic literature in Mary Shelley's legendary monster, David Lynch's depiction of Joseph Merrick, and Werner Herzog’s gloriously naive explorations of life via Kaspar Hauser, and along the way, "Interrogating Gender Dynamics and Sexuality from Nearly Every Angle". Our chance will come next month at SIFF Cinema, when "'Poor Things' Brings Hot Sex and Stone-cold Brilliance to the Screen" After an awkward MeToo hiatus, films are showing intimacy in messy, complicated ways again and in a late addition, The Guardian's Adrian Horton argues, "Why it Was a Good Year for Sex On Screen". As well as the question posed, "Provocative Sex is Back at the Movies. But are We Ready for It?", by Alexandra Kleeman, Guggenheim Fellow and author in the pages of The New York Times.

Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Transgressive Legacy, The Fearless Cinema of Claire Denis & “Cut! Is This the Death of Sex in Cinema?” | The Guardian

With the passing this last year of both Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci film circles mourned the cultural loss and contemplated the possible end of a era of widely viewed, transgressive, politically, and sexually liberated cinema. In the case of the senior Italian director behind such films as “Last Tango in Paris”, “The Spider’s Stratagem” and “The Conformist”, he was hailed in the pages of The Guardian as, “Bernardo Bertolucci: The Brilliant Last Emperor of Highbrow Cinema”. While the British director, known for “Walkabout”, “Don’t Look Now”, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, produced a body of work defined by the casting of music celebrity, sharp editing and disjunct, non-linear narratives. He was considered by many, “Nicolas Roeg: A Daring Film-maker of Passionate and Visceral Brilliance”. Much in the way of Bertolucci, Roeg's thematic content was often challenging, yet both directors were revered for their willingness to depict and explore the rough-hewn aspects of life and interpersonal relationships, such as in Suzanne Moore’s opinion piece for The Guardian, “Nicolas Roeg Created a Filmic World of Sex and Shock. He Messed Me up – and I Loved Him”. What the two shared in was their painstaking observed depictions of interpersonal relations. Not shying away from the messier corners of adult consensuality, they showed sex more directly, but also more honestly and obsessively than other directors of their time. Particularly in their most notable and groundbreaking work, in this case Roeg’s “Bad Timing” and Bertolucci’s aforementioned, “Last Tango in Paris”. Consequently for each there is no shortage of material when giving consideration to, “Sex Factor: Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Transgressive Legacy”.

In her observation on the diminishing of content in the modern era that might traverse such complex and charged territory, Catherine Shoard selects “The Fearless Cinema of Claire Denis” as the antithesis to these trends. Expressly the depiction of sex, sexual power and psychology in the director’s newest, "Claire Denis on High Life, Robert Pattinson, and Putting Juliette Binoche in a “F*ckbox”. The film’s sexual and corporeal focus on a unflinching exploration of "The Fleshy Frontier", and past traditions in related is cinema are considered in John Semley's piece for The Baffler. These multifaceted bodily, sexual, and psychological tensions also succinctly delineated in Charles Bramesco’s review, “High Life: Orgasmic Brilliance in Deepest Space with Robert Pattinson”. Plumbing further, Shoard’s piece for The Guardian delves into the current trend away from depictions of nuanced interpersonal content, which has made anything but values-defined expressions of sexual relations (and their biological and psychological underpinnings), anathema. Such is the cultural moment that a prohibitive MPAA rating, "trigger warning" supplied by the exhibitor, or outright retraction and editing of material in response to poor audience reception, is not unheard of. As Shoard illustrates over numerous observations and citations in, “Cut! Is this the Death of Sex in Cinema?", the reasons being concurrently made complicated and narrow-minded by the two sides of a polarized political landscape. Wherein sex has become that much more weaponized in its entanglement with identity and representation, and the discomfort experienced by audiences who feel their identity politics not complimentarily represented defining no small part of their enjoyment, or even acceptance, of thematic and psychological content in fiction. In the eyes of a currently influential constituency, for whom artistic merit must be allied to a certain branch of moral and political virtue, there are vast realms of the erotic, suggestive and sexual material on screen that will not pass such demands. Regardless of the truth in representing the complexity of these matters in relation to life. Or, as award-winning Man Booker shortlister, and recipient of Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, author Zadie Smith succinctly stated in a recent interview; "Identity is a Pain in the Arse".