Nothing sizzles more on the silver screen than the slow burn

Film directors are apparently being told to look to classics such as Casablanca for inspiration as to socially distanced love scenes. Personally, I’m not feeling it. Ilsa may be astoundingly alluring, but Rick I’d leave brooding in his gin joint.

I conducted an unofficial Twitter survey to see what would get the vote in terms of celluloid sexual chemistry and was gratified to have many of my recent-ish favourites confirmed. In the first instance, we have the magisterial Pierce Brosnan/rene Russo remake of The Thomas Crown Affair of 1999. There is the slight, yet smouldering George Clooney/ Jennifer Lopez crime caper Out of Sight from 1998, in which Lopez’s backside plays a robust supporting role. Or think of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love back in 2000. Wait, was the millennial mood causing a certain cinematic frisson to be unleashed?

Other hot tickets include: Harrison Ford and Kelly Mcgillis in Witness, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in Star Wars, and Harrison Ford having his eyes kissed by Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Basically, Harrison Ford. We had Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas doing grand passion in The English Patient, and Ralph Fiennes doing Julianne Moore in The End of the Affair. Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen received laurels for their convincingly passionate Pride & Prejudice, while I’d also single out Anya Taylor-joy and Johnny Flynn for giving the Knightley romance phwoar factor in this spring’s Emma.

Invariably, a whisper proves louder than a shout. One need look no further than Nagisa Ōshima’s grotesquely explicit In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which is considerably less arousing than the puppets going at it in 2004’s Team America: World Police. Tell me what I’ve missed @Hannahjbetts.