Who was having sex in the 1980s? I spent the decade trussed up in a lycra jumpsuit. Although there was a handy front-loading zip, I was getting my kicks hurtling out of helicopters. But think of that decade of sexy dance music, “Sexual Healing” and “I Want Your Sex”, that was pretty much the mantra for a hot teenage crowd.
So I was interested yesterday to read an article headlined No sex please, we’re Generation Z. It seems UK teens today are less likely to have sex underage than their predecessors. Only a fifth of boys and a third of girls are sexually experienced at 14 – or even want to be.
Parents must be sighing with relief. I remember the experience of being sent off to the family planning centre with my boyfriend. I was 15, he was 17, which seems very louche nowadays. I didn’t even want to have sex so young, but it was just the pressure girls were under – especially with a steady boyfriend in tow, feeling insecure that he might chuck you if you didn’t perform. Parents today are more likely to be marching their teenage offspring off to their therapist.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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I find this current lack of sex exciting as it is definitely giving power back to girls. Let them take control as social media squeezes out this teenage window of experimentation. Add to this the trend for young people not to drink or smoke or stay out late and you end up with your teenager in their bedroom talking to friends online, playing Fortnite and finding kittens to take photos of. I’d have loved this. It buys time for vulnerable teenagers.
1/10 Blue Valentine
Derek Cianfrance dared to portray sex with any sense of realism, both physically and emotionally, only to quickly get slapped with an NC-17 rating for showing Michelle Williams’ character, Cindy, on the receiving end of oral sex. “The sex felt real – it wasn’t sexy or ‘a sex scene’, and that’s why we got into trouble,” co-star Ryan Gosling remarked to The Observer at the time. “You shouldn’t be penalised for doing a good job.”
After successfully appealing against the MPAA’s decision, Blue Valentine reached cinemas as an R, thankfully allowing mainstream audiences to see how emotionally complex a matter sex can actually be, especially in a broken down marriage like the one shared by its lead characters.
2/10 Love & Basketball
Gina Prince-Bythewood has masterfully shown Hollywood how cinema can portray realistic sex without any loss of romanticism or intimacy. That’s especially true of her directorial debut, 2000’s Love & Basketball, in which Monica (Sanaa Lathan) loses her virginity to childhood sweetheart, Quincy (Omar Epps).
The moment is wonderfully tender, aided by Maxwell’s cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work”, while being one of the rare films that actually shows the use of a condom.
“The only note that I ever got from the studio during the filmmaking process was that when I shot that scene, they looked at the dailies and they said, they didn’t think she was enjoying it enough,” Prince-Bythewood told The Huffington Post. “And my argument was, it’s the first time and despite what the male fantasy might be, it’s not that great.”
New Line Cinema
3/10 Y Tu Mamá También
Alfonso Cuarón’s raucous classic inverts the American sex comedy: Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) are stereotypical, sex-obsessed young men distraught at the concept of their girlfriends leaving the country. Choosing to live as bachelors, they befriend an older woman (Maribel Verdú), who seduces both of them. Yet, the film drives them towards one, real truth: their own bisexuality, finally freed during the film’s famous threesome.
Though Y Tu Mamá También’s conclusion is tragic – Julio and Tenoch’s reject their own truth, turn their backs on each other, and suppress their feelings – their threesome still marks a moment of genuine, harmonious sensuality.
20th Century .
4/10 God’s Own Country
God’s Own Country star Alec Secareanu admitted he was initially “very afraid” of the kinds of scenes he would be tasked with filming for the gay drama film. “But the way each character has sex tells a lot about them; the way that they develop their relationship,” he told Attitude.
The first sexual encounter between Secareanu’s character Gheorghe and Johnny (Josh O’Connor) is quick, aggressive and with little intimacy. As Johnny slowly learns to open up to Gheroghe, their second encounter is far more romantic; intense in a different way to the first. Both actors later told of how they developed a close bond in real life after working together on-screen.
Orion Pictures
5/10 Carol
A film that finds its eroticism in small gestures – in the languid rest of a glove, in a glance, shared across a crowded room – when it comes to director Todd Haynes actually filming the first time Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) have sex, their chemistry is already so palpable that the moment feels nothing short of explosive.
“It’s very much like shooting a musical number,” Haynes told E!News of the scene. “You start the music and basically you just go and the camera finds the moments and the beats. And we had some amazing material with these two women to work with.”
StudioCanal
6/10 Moonlight
Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winner is one of the most tender depictions of yearning in modern cinema. Its protagonist Chiron (played by Ashton Sanders here, at other points by Alex R. Hibbert and Trevante Rhodes) experiences his first sexual encounter with fellow student Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) on a quiet, isolated beach. Their fumbling may pay testament to the awkwardness of a teenager’s first experiences, but Jenkins’ approach also gives the moment a profound grace, and an acknowledgement of how it will come to shape Chiron’s own view of himself.
“It’s the first time I filmed a sex scene. It’s the first time these actors had performed a sex scene,” Jenkins told Entertainment Weekly of the scene. “It’s not gratuitous. It’s very delicate in keeping with most of the film, but it kept me up at night. I really wanted to get the feelings of that first sort of sexual expression, and I wanted to get it right… but then, when we got to shoot it, it rolled off like butter.”
A24
7/10 Don’t Look Now
Much like Blue Valentine, Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 classic swiftly faced controversy due to a sex scene so emotionally faithful (while also depicting a female character, Julie Christie’s Laura, receiving oral sex), that it caused clashes with censors. A grieving couple desperately holding onto the shreds of their marriage after the death of their child, Laura and John (Donald Sutherland)’s raw emotions and vulnerability in this moment are famously intercut with post-coital preparations to go to dinner – an attempt, in fact, to satiate censors.
Christie herself admitted the film’s innovations made the scene difficult to film since, “There were no available examples, no role models … I just went blank and Nic [Roeg] shouted instructions.”
British Lion Films
8/10 Team America: World Police
Sex is funny, sometimes hilarious. There’s no getting through this list without acknowledging that fact, and there’s no better film to summarise it than Team America: World Police and its infamous puppet intercourse, enthusiastically filing through every sexual position in the book.
As puppet creator Stephen Chiodo noted to MovieWeb, it’s the scene’s bracing artifice that’s actually the key to its humour. As he explained, “The more realistic it became, the less funny it was. The more axes of movement, the more lifelike movement we gave the puppets during the sex scene, it just wasn’t funny. But when you had them stiff like dolls, kind of rutting, it just was funny.”
Paramount Pictures
9/10 Mulholland Drive
Trust David Lynch to create a highly-charged sex scene that inevitably only becomes part of the web created to deceive and befuddle us. Rita (Laura Harring) and Betty (Naomi Watts) may consummate their bubbling affections for each other in a sensuous, dreamlike manner – but who is Rita in this moment? Who is Betty? Is this encounter real or imagined?
This moment of lush, Hollywood perfection only creates the set up for Mulholland Drive’s earth-shattering twist. Betty is now Diane, and her own sexual experience couldn’t be any more different: a tear-soaked, anguished masturbation scene that seems exemplary of her own broken soul.
10/10 Unfaithful
One of the finest examples of the erotic thriller, director Adrian Lyne depicts the extramarital affair in its full urgency, its entire spectrum of conflicted emotions, as suburban housewife Connie (Diane Lane) becomes enraptured by a handsome young Frenchman (Olivier Martinez).
Their initial encounter is at first tenuous, tender, before a hunger seems to consume Connie and her guilt is momentarily forgotten in the throes of extreme passion, only for them to creep slowly back on the train ride home. The memory of its erotic power, the searing regret; those feelings soon become feverishly intertwined.
20th Century .
1/10 Blue Valentine
Derek Cianfrance dared to portray sex with any sense of realism, both physically and emotionally, only to quickly get slapped with an NC-17 rating for showing Michelle Williams’ character, Cindy, on the receiving end of oral sex. “The sex felt real – it wasn’t sexy or ‘a sex scene’, and that’s why we got into trouble,” co-star Ryan Gosling remarked to The Observer at the time. “You shouldn’t be penalised for doing a good job.”
After successfully appealing against the MPAA’s decision, Blue Valentine reached cinemas as an R, thankfully allowing mainstream audiences to see how emotionally complex a matter sex can actually be, especially in a broken down marriage like the one shared by its lead characters.
2/10 Love & Basketball
Gina Prince-Bythewood has masterfully shown Hollywood how cinema can portray realistic sex without any loss of romanticism or intimacy. That’s especially true of her directorial debut, 2000’s Love & Basketball, in which Monica (Sanaa Lathan) loses her virginity to childhood sweetheart, Quincy (Omar Epps).
The moment is wonderfully tender, aided by Maxwell’s cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work”, while being one of the rare films that actually shows the use of a condom.
“The only note that I ever got from the studio during the filmmaking process was that when I shot that scene, they looked at the dailies and they said, they didn’t think she was enjoying it enough,” Prince-Bythewood told The Huffington Post. “And my argument was, it’s the first time and despite what the male fantasy might be, it’s not that great.”
New Line Cinema
3/10 Y Tu Mamá También
Alfonso Cuarón’s raucous classic inverts the American sex comedy: Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) are stereotypical, sex-obsessed young men distraught at the concept of their girlfriends leaving the country. Choosing to live as bachelors, they befriend an older woman (Maribel Verdú), who seduces both of them. Yet, the film drives them towards one, real truth: their own bisexuality, finally freed during the film’s famous threesome.
Though Y Tu Mamá También’s conclusion is tragic – Julio and Tenoch’s reject their own truth, turn their backs on each other, and suppress their feelings – their threesome still marks a moment of genuine, harmonious sensuality.
20th Century .
4/10 God’s Own Country
God’s Own Country star Alec Secareanu admitted he was initially “very afraid” of the kinds of scenes he would be tasked with filming for the gay drama film. “But the way each character has sex tells a lot about them; the way that they develop their relationship,” he told Attitude.
The first sexual encounter between Secareanu’s character Gheorghe and Johnny (Josh O’Connor) is quick, aggressive and with little intimacy. As Johnny slowly learns to open up to Gheroghe, their second encounter is far more romantic; intense in a different way to the first. Both actors later told of how they developed a close bond in real life after working together on-screen.
Orion Pictures
5/10 Carol
A film that finds its eroticism in small gestures – in the languid rest of a glove, in a glance, shared across a crowded room – when it comes to director Todd Haynes actually filming the first time Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) have sex, their chemistry is already so palpable that the moment feels nothing short of explosive.
“It’s very much like shooting a musical number,” Haynes told E!News of the scene. “You start the music and basically you just go and the camera finds the moments and the beats. And we had some amazing material with these two women to work with.”
StudioCanal
6/10 Moonlight
Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winner is one of the most tender depictions of yearning in modern cinema. Its protagonist Chiron (played by Ashton Sanders here, at other points by Alex R. Hibbert and Trevante Rhodes) experiences his first sexual encounter with fellow student Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) on a quiet, isolated beach. Their fumbling may pay testament to the awkwardness of a teenager’s first experiences, but Jenkins’ approach also gives the moment a profound grace, and an acknowledgement of how it will come to shape Chiron’s own view of himself.
“It’s the first time I filmed a sex scene. It’s the first time these actors had performed a sex scene,” Jenkins told Entertainment Weekly of the scene. “It’s not gratuitous. It’s very delicate in keeping with most of the film, but it kept me up at night. I really wanted to get the feelings of that first sort of sexual expression, and I wanted to get it right… but then, when we got to shoot it, it rolled off like butter.”
A24
7/10 Don’t Look Now
Much like Blue Valentine, Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 classic swiftly faced controversy due to a sex scene so emotionally faithful (while also depicting a female character, Julie Christie’s Laura, receiving oral sex), that it caused clashes with censors. A grieving couple desperately holding onto the shreds of their marriage after the death of their child, Laura and John (Donald Sutherland)’s raw emotions and vulnerability in this moment are famously intercut with post-coital preparations to go to dinner – an attempt, in fact, to satiate censors.
Christie herself admitted the film’s innovations made the scene difficult to film since, “There were no available examples, no role models … I just went blank and Nic [Roeg] shouted instructions.”
British Lion Films
8/10 Team America: World Police
Sex is funny, sometimes hilarious. There’s no getting through this list without acknowledging that fact, and there’s no better film to summarise it than Team America: World Police and its infamous puppet intercourse, enthusiastically filing through every sexual position in the book.
As puppet creator Stephen Chiodo noted to MovieWeb, it’s the scene’s bracing artifice that’s actually the key to its humour. As he explained, “The more realistic it became, the less funny it was. The more axes of movement, the more lifelike movement we gave the puppets during the sex scene, it just wasn’t funny. But when you had them stiff like dolls, kind of rutting, it just was funny.”
Paramount Pictures
9/10 Mulholland Drive
Trust David Lynch to create a highly-charged sex scene that inevitably only becomes part of the web created to deceive and befuddle us. Rita (Laura Harring) and Betty (Naomi Watts) may consummate their bubbling affections for each other in a sensuous, dreamlike manner – but who is Rita in this moment? Who is Betty? Is this encounter real or imagined?
This moment of lush, Hollywood perfection only creates the set up for Mulholland Drive’s earth-shattering twist. Betty is now Diane, and her own sexual experience couldn’t be any more different: a tear-soaked, anguished masturbation scene that seems exemplary of her own broken soul.
10/10 Unfaithful
One of the finest examples of the erotic thriller, director Adrian Lyne depicts the extramarital affair in its full urgency, its entire spectrum of conflicted emotions, as suburban housewife Connie (Diane Lane) becomes enraptured by a handsome young Frenchman (Olivier Martinez).
Their initial encounter is at first tenuous, tender, before a hunger seems to consume Connie and her guilt is momentarily forgotten in the throes of extreme passion, only for them to creep slowly back on the train ride home. The memory of its erotic power, the searing regret; those feelings soon become feverishly intertwined.
20th Century .
Human interaction is becoming exhausting. I find myself deliberately shutting down opportunities to make eye contact and speak to anyone. We choose the supermarket self-service checkout, we favour quick lazy clicks on Amazon over a discussion about bra sizes with a real human being inside the John Lewis changing rooms. The great “Netflix and chill” mantra used to mean a cosy evening in having some crispy kale and sex; now it means Netflix and, well, chill. Back in the 1980s, our equivalent was sex or The Two Ronnies. It was a no brainer.
Everything is contactless now and sex has followed suit. You can always ping off a quick “dick pic” for a bit of instant gratification, which means you don’t even have to put on a coat, make yourself look Instagram beautiful, actually make eye contact with anyone or risk a fumble in the pub car park which might end up with the wrong photo being flashed into your future employer’s inbox.
Has sex just become too messy to be bothered with?
My funniest moment this week was in a meeting with a 30-year-old when her phone on the table flashed up “Use a condom”. I was stunned. Did her phone think I was a sexual predator? No: it turns out she was monitoring her ovulation dates using the Natural Cycle app. Two days ago it had flashed up “You’re nearing your ovulation”, causing utter confusion at the petrol pump till. But how thrilling that an app is telling you how and when to have sex, rather than a persistent boyfriend.
My first Challenge Anneka clipboard moment was aged 15, crowd-funding among the lower fifth to pay for a friend’s private abortion. Sex seemed thrilling and dangerous. Contraception was often as unreliable as Russian roulette. If our teenage selves had the technology for period tracker apps, perhaps we too would have behaved differently in (or, more often, out of) the bedroom.
Where is this technology going? According to one study reported by the Washington Post this week, young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls, bone spurs caused by the forward title of the head as they endlessly check likes and swipe right. So now smartphones are not only changing the way we behave, they’re changing the human form. We now also have “text neck” and “texting thumb”.
It’s official. Teenagers are getting the horn – but the wrong sort.
