Balls and Walnuts
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Are there any bad sex scenes?
From IFC.com, the people who brought us The 50 Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema, comes The 50 Worst Sex Scenes in Cinema.
I think you can make a good argument that there are no bad sex scenes. Rape doesn’t count because that’s violence, not sex. And the Brown Bunny doesn’t count because it’s not the terminal BJ which makes the movie rotten, it’s everything that precedes it (the whole movie, that is). So: can IFC convince me that bad sex scenes exist?
Let’s focus on the Top Ten. Right away, I have to agree with them. Any sex scene that features Tom Cruise is a total cold shower. Now if it were a gay scene, that I could believe. Next up is Madonna doing Willem Defoe in Body of Evidence. Okay, I’ll grant them that Madonna is a turn-off, too, even a fifteen-years-younger Madonna.
My thesis is going to hell.
#8, Killing Me Softly — how can Heather Graham naked ever be anything but hot? I don’t buy it. Okay, the asphyxiation stuff, not cool. Children might be watching this and they might try it at home. But Heather Graham is still hot.
Same goes for Gong Li (#7, Miami Vice).
Color of Night, #6: okay, I can’t remember this sex scene, and I saw the movie. So that’s saying something. But I’m willing to forgive Jane March just about anything. Have you see The Lover? Woof.
I haven’t seen the strap-on scene in Myra Breckinridge (#5), but they’ve conveniently linked to it on YouTube. Yes, this truly is vile. Not only do you not get to see Raquel Welch naked, you also get dozens of ridiculous cutaways, including, I’m not kidding, an atomic bomb detonation. The one thing that would have made this a perfect storm of inanity would have been a cutaway of the Nuremburg rallies. Yes, as the seventh minute dawned of this well nigh interminable scene, I found myself thinking, “What, no Nazis?”
#4, Ma Mère: okay, pretentiousness and incest are a bad combo. (Speaking of which, why isn’t Spanking the Monkey on their list?) Point IFC.
#3, Irréversible: rape. Blech.
Kyle MacLachlan is entirely too pretty in Showgirls for me to buy him as hetero (#2). That was my problem with Blue Velvet, too. Anyway, I had to register at DailyMotion to watch this video, but it was worth it. While I cannot disagree with IFC’s observation (“Berkley’s in flagrante flailings are so wild, in fact, you’d have to be a seizure fetishist to get off on them”), the actress’s performance brought to mind another icon of aqueous cinema: the opening scene of Jaws.
And what film did IFC save for the #1 spot? You’ll have to check out the story for yourself, but I have only one comment. With all that melted butter, someone should have brought popcorn.
D.
Last Tango, huh?
I dunno about bad, but it was a little silly. Even back in the day.
I can’t remember which Truffaut movie it was (I haven’t seen that many of them) but there was a ten minute defloration scene… or ten minutes of attempted defloration, anyway. My college film class was falling out of their seats with laughter.
Grunt, grunt, grimace, grimace, grimace for ten minutes.
I looked over at my acquaintance and he was inflating the paper bag in which he’d smuggled his beer.
And right at the moment the subtitles appeared: “And then finally… her ribbon broke.”
*BOOM*
If the grunting and grimacing had not been silly enough, the long tracking shot of blood across the bed sheets — as if a Kenyan marathonist had perhaps run the entire length of the room with a punctured femoral artery — left us sobbing with laughter.
Pretty much anything with Tom Cruise now is going to be bad. Strange how one off-kilter appearance on Oprah can ruin a career. I don’t know that he’s believable in anything anymore. And, I think it’s retroactively affected his films too. Now, you watch Rainman and you think Raymond was the normal one. 😉
well, i don’t know about movie sex scenes, but there is some TERRIBLE written stuff out there, especially in the worlds of fanfiction…check out http://community.livejournal.com/weepingcock/ for some hilarious (read: so terrible you need brain bleach) scenes the likes of which should have NEVER BEEN THOUGHT NOT TO MENTION WRITTEN. they’re that bad.
so I registered and watched too. Wonder that Berkley woman didn’t drown.
And what a WASTE of champagne.
Sex scenes have to be the most difficult element in a movie. If the characters don’t have you drawn in on an emotional level, the scene seems too much like an intrusion, and often gratuitous.
Even in a novel, sex scenes are difficult to pull off. They can so easily be awkward and seem out of place, even trite. In writing novels, I find intimate scenes to be a real challenge, and more time consuming than writing other scenes. Since intimacy is a natural part of a romantic involvement, I try to use these scenes to display an important part of a growing emotional bond. Two people getting nude together, especially for the first time, has a great deal of power.
thanks, folks 🙂
Oh, and shaina — that Weeping Cock site? Major oy. I could spend all day there.