When was the last time you found a sex scene sexy?

Telegraph

26-06-2025

Back in the day, the actress Greta Scacchi had something of a reputation for 'getting her kit off' on camera. That was the term we all used in the 1990s, and it wasn't so much sexist as highlighting a terribly British, jolly hockeysticks approach to sex. Come on, old thing. Last one to the marital bedchamber's a lemon, that sort of thing. The term popped back into my head this week for the first time in years.
Scacchi, a very good actress as well as a paragon of soft-focus eroticism, has been back in the news, telling Radio Times that she finds modern sex scenes, 'the explicit rutting stuff' as she calls it, deeply unsettling.
At the height of Scacchi's career – when she appeared with Tim Robbins in The Player, with Charles Dance in White Mischief and with Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent – everything was very gentle, 'made to look beautiful and slowed down' as Scacchi said. Sex on screen at the time tended to be heralded by a bit of light jazz (often a saxophone) and conducted with tasteful arrangements of Egyptian cotton, the actor's modesty often artfully concealed.
Was this good sex? Not exactly – it was inoffensive, and almost as laughable as the act itself, despite the general degree of decorum. Except we now know from the era that such scenes were not always very nice for those involved. While Scacchi was unscathed, there must have been plenty of actresses who had horrible experiences. Julia Roberts has always demanded that anything sexy be toned down, but few women have her clout.
There is no doubt that any on-screen nudity from that era, no matter how convivial the circumstances, was all at the behest of a middle-aged director who was either fulfilling their fantasies or had an eye on the commercial big time. In the cold light of day, these old sex scenes feel like part of a wider power trip.
Things have changed, as Scacchi points out, but the drift away from the fluffy loveliness of the 1990s has not been straightforward. You would imagine that in the wake of the Me Too movement sex scenes might not have much of a place in film and television, but this is not the case. Indeed, it often feels like there is more sex on screen than ever before, and that modern phenomenon, the intimacy co-ordinator, has their work cut out ensuring that sensitive thespians are entirely comfortable with making the beast with two backs. The end result is not neutered but often quite violent (think of Tom Hollander and Leo Woodall in The White Lotus or Emilia Clarke and Jason Momoa in Game of Thrones) which makes you wonder whether the majority of intimacy co-ordinators are, essentially, sado-masochists.
Of course, they, as well as the directors and probably the actors, may well suggest that the end result is due to a sort of artistic quest, a search for emotional truth, but ultimately such scenes seem hardly less ridiculous than those carried out with soft-lighting and a burst of Kenny G. In the worst cases, the sex scenes of today veer dangerously close to pornography, which makes you wonder why the hell the actors agreed to do them in the first place.
The truth is that most sex scenes are unnecessary, and it is not as if they are even serving the dirty mac brigade. I remember hearing stories of Channel 4's infamous red triangle; a warning given at the start of any programme during the mid-1980s that included risqué content, and a fillip for the lonely men of the nation (I imagine it was mainly men whose interest was piqued by the promise of a piece of mid-1970s Swedish arthouse erotica). Such needs are now pointless given that we can all seem the most extreme sexual acts on the internet.
So is there ever any need for sex on screen? I would suggest that the old cliché about such shenanigans being 'integral to the plot' is only occasionally true, and usually the most effective sex scenes are not about sex at all. I dread to mention Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) because we now know that Maria Schneider was treated abominably by the director who had decided not to tell her what Marlon Brando was about to do with a tub of Lurpak. But if we set aside the fact that Schneider was essentially being forced into filming a simulated rape while an entire crew watched her, it is a very effective scene which shows the extent to which someone who is incredibly damaged (Brando's character Paul) will try and make someone as damaged as they are (Schneider's character Jeanne).
Then there is its near-contemporary Don't Look Now (1973), Nic Roeg's masterpiece about a couple (played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) who travel to Venice after their daughter's death. What we would now call something naff like 'the grieving process' is punctuated by supernatural sightings and the most famous sex scene in history which seems to last a lifetime. It is tasteful, but unlike the noodling of 90s erotica, it feels psychologically real, as two people remain unable to articulate their lingering pain through words.
There was no such thing as an intimacy co-ordinator in 1973; and it is telling that Roeg remained friends with both actors. Above all, he managed to do the undoable – he made a film that was actually sexy. The intimacy co-ordinators of today with their dreams of 'explicit rutting' should go back to their day jobs.