After a period of chastity, Hollywood embraces sex again
Zendaya, clad in a skintight dress, gyrates on a dance floor in “Challengers,” a $56 million sports drama that arrived in multiplexes a week ago. “It’s getting hot in here,” the hip-hop soundtrack intones, as she closes her eyes and runs her hands through her hair, lost in fantasy. “So take off all your clothes.”
The story continues at a motel, where Zendaya, playing a tennis prodigy, begins a ménage à trois with two guys; it fizzles after they become more interested in each other. The plot moves on — to sultry interplay on the hood of a car, in a dorm room, in the back seat of a car, on the wooden slats of a sauna. There is erotic churro eating.
“Sex is back!” shouted an apparently elated man at the conclusion of a prerelease “Challengers” screening in West Hollywood, California, this month.
Trend spotting in cinema is a hazardous pursuit. Think about how many times the rom-com has been declared dead — and alive — and dead. (No, wait, alive.) But this much can be said with surety: Hollywood is hornier than it has been in years.
“It absolutely feels like the pendulum has swung back toward filmmakers exploring adult relationships and sexuality in their projects,” said Amy Pascal, the former chairwoman of Sony Pictures and producing force behind “Challengers.”
“I welcome that,” she added. Eroticism used to be common in studio movies like “Challengers,” which was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. “Body Heat,” “Basic Instinct,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Disclosure,” “Cruel Intentions” and “Eyes Wide Shut” are among the many examples from the 1980s and ’90s.
In the 2000s, however, film companies started to obsessively focus on PG-13 franchises and animation — genres that could play to a global audience and sell merchandise. Studios also wanted to expand into China, where censors do not allow sex scenes. As a result, steamy storytelling began to dwindle on the big screen (except at art house theaters). Premium television picked up the slack.
Sex in mainstream movies was “pretty much gone” by 2019, as Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for The Washington Post, wrote in a column that year. A few months later, Kate Hagen, writing in Playboy magazine, found that only about 1.2% of films released between 2010 and 2020 contained an overt sex scene, the lowest decade total since the 1960s. (It peaked in the 1990s. Coincidentally or not, that was the decade when pornography started to become available online.)
Now, some filmmakers are pushing back.
Awards season brought “Saltburn,” with its arousing-disturbing bathtub scene and Barry Keoghan’s twirling, full-frontal finale. “Poor Things” found an insatiable Emma Stone romping through a Paris brothel. Christopher Nolan filmed the first sex scenes of his 35-year career for “Oppenheimer.”
Over the past year, the trickle of R-rated sex comedies in theaters turned into a relative torrent. “Anyone But You” found Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell going at it. “No Hard Feelings” starred Jennifer Lawrence as a kinda-sorta prostitute on a mission to deflower an awkward student. So far, results at the box office have been mixed. “Anyone but You,” made by Sony for $25 million, collected a hefty $219 million this year, while “Poor Things,” which cost Searchlight Pictures $35 million, took in a solid $117 million. Other attempts (“Joy Ride,” “No Hard Feelings”) have disappointed or fizzled entirely.
Reviews for “Challengers” have been extremely positive. Box office analysts expect it to collect roughly $15 million in its debut weekend in the U.S. and Canada, enough for No. 1.