Five Sex Scenes That Are More Memorable Than Anything In ‘Nymphomaniac’

Nymphomaniac, Lars Von Trier’s ode to all things carnal, ejaculates onto Australian screens this week, and it’s a doozy. It’s lengthy in duration (told over four hours in two volumes), thick with unabashed intellectualising, and dripping with ballsy moments that are often difficult to swallow (ed: okay, enough of that).

Critics are divided on the merit of the crazy Dane’s latest offering — some believe it’s merely a convoluted justification for Von Trier’s unevolved sense of sexual self, and others argue it’s a genuinely thought-provoking negotiation of his beefs with contemporary coitus. Either way, Von Trier has a lot to say about sex, and in Nymphomaniac he says it and says it and says it and says it.

But for a man who obviously sees sex as a governing motivation for human behaviour, he doesn’t seem to like it very much. While the sex scenes in Nymphomaniac are mostly unsimulated, they’re largely devoid of energy or excitement, treated in such a matter-of-fact, almost lazy fashion, as if the man possesses a degree of disdain for his subject matter. Maybe that’s the point, but if you’re looking for an autoerotic fix or for sexual interactions that reveal accumulating truths about character, Nymphomaniac is not the film for you.

Perhaps you’d be better off revisiting some of these more memorable sex scenes from the last decade or so of modern cinema?

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A History Of Violence (2005)

Early on in director David Cronenberg’s slow-boiling character study, Viggo Mortensen’s suburban dad locks genitals with his doting wife, played by Maria Bello. She’s dressed in her old cheerleading garb, and she rides her husband in a steady rhythm while soft music swells around them. The scene tells us that everything is safe and innocent in this couple’s world, that they’re going through the motions in a way many other couples go through the motions, and that they’re more than happy with their sexual status quo.

But when sinister ghosts emerge from Viggo’s past — a past completely unknown to his wife — and force his long-dormant, yet expertly violent hand, the couple’s sex life takes as sharp a turn as the plot. Having glimpsed her husband’s pre-witness protection program disposition, she scurries away from him in fear. He chases her up the stairs of their suburban dream house, desperately asserting that these revelations don’t affect their love, and a struggle quickly explodes into a passionate, gravity-defying, elbow-bruising expression of lust. It’s a scene that reveals the complexity of Bello’s reaction to her husband’s hidden talent — one that she’s as attracted to as she is fearful — and Cronenberg manages to direct the scene in a way where both parties are clearly purging emotions they’re still yet to fully understand.

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8 Mile (2002)

Say what you will about this Marshall Mathers vehicle set in the world of underground rap-battling, but it contains one of the most in-your-face sex scenes in modern American cinema. Unconcerned with gloss or melodrama, devoid of soft-focus or a didactic score, this Eminem/Brittany Murphy squelch displays foreplay at its most primitive. After scene upon scene of flirtatiousness, the pair’s lust has grown so untameable that Em’s hand can’t help but find its way into Brittany’s pants. In an industry that’s shy about realistic onscreen depictions of vaginally-centred foreplay, the scene is refreshingly honest.

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Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)

Two young men set off on a road trip, both leaving behind their girlfriends. On the way, they meet a vivacious older woman, who joins them on their journey, having sex with each of them without the other knowing. The two men are the best of friends, yet as the film progresses it becomes apparent that they’ve both been guilty of betraying that friendship by sleeping with each other’s girlfriends.

There’s a lot of sex in Y Tu Mama Tambien, the breakout film from recent Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron, but none more memorable than the last, where the perceptive older woman, having seen the duo’s problematic friendship unravel, coaxes them into a ménage a trois, and spurring the surprising — yet in hindsight, inevitable — conclusion of the two young men engaging in a passionate kiss. (Unfortunately, YouTube only hosts a shortened version of the scene. It’s important to note that their lady companion has disappeared below the edge of the frame.)

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Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

The last place you’d ever expect to find a memorable sex scene is in a Kevin Smith movie starring Seth Rogen. The majority of Zack and Miri’s depictions of sex (even if staged on a porn set) are so comical and ludicrous that they make Mel Brooks look like Catherine Brelliat (which perhaps was Smith’s intention) — when Rogen and his best, platonic friend (played by the grounding Elizabeth Banks) finally do the deed, you’ve almost forgotten that onscreen sex scenes can pack an emotional punch. The moment’s a little cheesy, it isn’t in any way auto-erotic, and I’m sure if placed in a more serious film it wouldn’t have been as effective, but within the story’s context it’s just so… well… nice. It’s a moment between two people who care about each other deeply and are unable to hide that fact, even with a bunch of horny slackers watching on.

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Mulholland Drive (2001)

Okay, so technically this isn’t a sex scene, but it may as well be. David Lynch’s labyrinthine dream-come-nightmare set on both sides of the Hollywood sheen is renowned for its Naomi Watts/Laura Harring sapphic frolic, but that’s not the scene I’m talking about. Lynch often makes audiences hyper-aware that they’re watching a movie; his actors’ behaviours are mannered and ‘performed’, so it came as a surprise that the film’s most immersive scene occurs during an acting audition. Watts, a young, idealistic, wannabe-thespian, is given a second chance to prove her performing prowess with a mature man after her first attempt is deemed artificial (yet, strangely, quite Lynchian), and in comparison, the result is breathtaking. The pair redo the scene with such palpable passion that one wonders whether when Lynch yelled cut, they escaped to a trailer to finish what they started.

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Nymphomaniac opens in cinemas this Thursday.

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Jeremy Cassar is a screenwriter from Sydney.