First Sex Ru

First Sex Ru

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From Lars von Trier to John Cameron Mitchell and almost every Vincent Gallo movie, here are the films that actually captured real sex scenes.
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“Wetlands,” “Pola X,” “The Idiots,” “Intimacy,” “Strange by the Lake,” “Immoral Woman”
Sex on film is nothing new, and yet unsimulated intercourse in non-pornographic films has been somewhat of a marvel.
Catherine Breillat ‘s first film in 1976, “A Very Young Girl,” adapts her own controversial novel about a 14-year-old exploring her newfound sexuality. While the lead actress Charlotte Alexandra was age 20 during production, the film wasn’t released in theaters in the U.S. until 2000.
Breillat’s later film, “Romance,” was announced as the first European film with non-simulated sex scenes in 1999, according to Breillat.
“Actors are prostitutes because they’re asked to play other feelings,” Breillat exclusively told IndieWire . “This prostitution is not profane; it’s a sacred act that we give them.”
In contrast, John Cameron Mitchell set out to “honor” sex as a pastime for real people, much like art, music, or cuisine, in his second feature film, “Shortbus,” the 2006 film now rolling out a re-release restoration nationwide.
Mitchell told IndieWire about filming the cult classic, “Certainly, a lot of films had used sex, but they were pretty grim, and I wanted something more fun and funny, but still emotionally deep. And so I said, ‘I never want you to do anything you don’t want to do, but I do want you to challenge yourselves so we can challenge the audience.'”
Mitchell continued, “‘Shortbus’ isn’t about sex. It uses sex as a medium, as a delivery system for ideas and characters and emotions, just like ‘Hedwig [and the Angry Itch]’ uses music. Sex is our music in ‘Shortbus.’ We really only did one sexual rehearsal. I just went with what they wanted to do.”
And the depiction of unsimulated sex onscreen has taken many forms across decades and new political landscapes. “In terms of sex being presented on film, mainstream or even independent film has foresworn it,” Mitchell summarized. “They’ve given it up, because it’s too scary. There’s too many people saying someone’s being exploited and consent-based issues in intimacy. Imagine an intimacy counselor on the ‘Shortbus’ set. Imagine…a ‘Shortbus’ intimacy counselor would be like, ‘May he put his arm inside you now? Is that OK?'”
See the definitive list of unsimulated sex in film, directed by filmmakers from Lars von Trier to Vincent Gallo, William Friedkin and Abel Ferrera.
Catherine Breillat’s 1999 film is widely credited for destigmatizing unsimulated sex scenes in arthouse cinema. “Romance” follows Marie (Caroline Ducey) as she searches for sexual fulfillment outside of her monogamous relationship.
The 1979 film starring Helen Mirren includes necrophiliac incest, which is thankfully simulated. But the montage of sex scenes is very much so unsimulated, thanks to Penthouse founder Bob Guccione being a producer on the film.
Catherine Breillat’s “A Real Young Girl” centers on the coming-of-age sexual awakening of a 14-year-old girl (Charlotte Alexandra). The actors were of age while filming, with Alexandra 20 at the time of production.
Nagisa Oshima’s “In the Realm of Senses” is based on the true story of Sada Abe, a Japanese woman who erotically asphyxiated her lover then cut off his penis and kept it in her handbag. While the mutiliation and murder aren’t real, the sex very much is.
William Friedkin’s “Cruising” — set in NYC’s leather community during a string of homicides — features murder scenes that are cut with (and, inherently, compared to) actual footage of unsimulated sex.
Co-written and directed by Leos Carax, “Pola X” features a pair of long-lost siblings turned lovers in the adaptation of a Herman Melville novel. Body doubles were reportedly used for the more explicit scenes but it’s unsimulated sex nonetheless — just not quite sure whether or not featuring lead stars Guillaume Depardieu and Yekaterina Golubera.
Lars von Trier’s “The Idiots” encourages letting out the “inner idiot” inside. Turns out, most of our idiotic or most primal tendencies include orgies. Most sex scense in the film are simulated, but there is one scene that is definitely real.
“Baise-Moi,” which translates to “Rape Me,” is co-written and co-directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. The rape revenge thriller has real sex, but not real violence, but still was widely controversial.
Portuguese film “O Fantasma,” or as translated, “The Phantom,” is about Sergio (Ricardo Meneses) who explores love interests in Lisbon. It’s not porn, but it sure does have a lot of sex.
Written and directed by Vincent Gallo, “The Brown Bunny” famously features an unsimulated oral sex scene with Chloe Sevigny. Gallo himself is the receiver, and the scene continues until his completion.
Jay (Mark Rylance) and Claire (Kerry Fox) are two strangers who have weekly, not-so-anonymous sex, until they develop an emotional relationship. Likened to “Last Tango in Paris,” “Intimacy” entirely features unsimulated sex scenes. “Intimacy” is the first film in the history of Britain to feature hardcore sex scenes and be passed by the BBFC without cuts. Kerry Fox’s real life partner Alexander Linklater wrote a column for The Guardian in 2001 detailing his own experience watching his lover have real sex with another man in a film.
Lead stars Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley engage in unsimulated sex intercut with real footage of concert performances by Franz Ferdinand, The Dandy Warhols, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in Michael Winterbottom’s “9 Songs.” (In Mexico, the film’s title translates to “9 Orgasms.”) Stilley and O’Brien met for the first time only two days before having to have unsimulated sex for the film. Stilley originally had requested to go uncredited in the final film, but remains billed as the lead star.
Catherine Breillat continues to document unsimulated sex by way of art. Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi performs in “Anatomy of Hell,” which delves into the darker side of sexuality.
Iconic film “Shortbus” captured unsimulated sex in a variety of ways while following a group of people in New York navigating love and sex.
“[Director John Cameron Mitchell] front loaded a lot of the sex to kind of break the audience, shock people at first, weed out the really squeamish people and kind of get people comfortable for what they’re gonna be seeing,” lead star Paul Dawson told Pride Source in 2006. To note, Dawson is shown performing oral sex on himself…multiple times.
Lars von Trier takes on unsimulated sex again in “Antichrist,” about a couple, played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who lose a child out of negligence because they are having sex in the shower. That sex scene is 100 percent real; the death (and subsequent ritualistic gential mutiliation) is not.
Stars Eric Balfour and Lauren Lee Smith take part in unsimulated sex in yet another “Last Tango in Paris” type film, directed by Clément Virgo.

Originally titled “The Velvet Side of Hell,” “8MM 2” was rebranded as a sequel to the Nicolas Cage snuff film thriller (it’s not). However, “8MM 2” does feauture unsimulated sex, as well as snippets from porn films.
Living up to its title, “Nymphomaniac” and its sequel has a lot of sex. But, is it unsimulated or not? The love scenes in the film were allegedly created by digitally adding porn star’s genitals to actor’s bodies for a head-scratching simulated vs. unsimulated debate for this Lars von Trier set of films.
Most of the sex scenes involving Helen (Carla Juri) is simulated, but a sequence with men masturbating onto a pizza is not. And no, that is not mozzarella.
Willem Dafoe stars as Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini in the 2014 biopic directed by Abel Ferrara. The sex scenes are largely unsimulated, portraying Pasolini’s relationship with lust, love, and the body.
Written and directed by Gaspar Noé, “Love” is shot in 3D to get the full (ejaculate) experience. Noé first pitched the film to Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel while making “Irreversible.” The script was rumored to be only seven pages long, with Noé letting the actors improvise and figure out their own blocking during sex scenes.
Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman’s 1967 film “I Am Curious (Yellow)” was originally billed as porn in the U.S. However, Roger Ebert’s criticism of the movie cited that it was “anti-erotic” in nature, as reported by Vulture . State and federal claims against the film for being obscene went to the Supreme Court.
Filmmaker Sjöman said at the time, via Entertainment Weekly , “If you’re speculating with sex and have nothing to say artistically, you’re going to have a bad film. But if you have something to say, you’re on safe ground.”
Jess Franco’s 1975 film can be seen in three different versions: a straight vampire film called “La comtesse noire,” an erotic horror film entitled “La Comtesse aux seins nus,” and a hardcore version, “Les avaleuses.” The film premiered in France under the title “La Comtesse noire.”
The 2007 film, directed by David Brothers and Crispin Glover, contains actual penetration.
The 1976 erotic musical comedy version of “Alice in Wonderland” includes an unsimulated lesbian sex scene between Kristine DeBell and Juliet Graham. The movie was originally produced as a softcore film, but later re-edited as a hardcore pornographic film, using footage not filmed during the original production, including a sequence of De Bell performing oral sex on the film’s producer, Bill Osco, which was edited into the film’s Mad Hatter sequence.
Split into three stories, “Immoral Woman” is directed by Walerian Borowczyk and follows a trio of women: Margherita, Marceline, and Marie. The first story with Margherita has an unsimulated intercourse scene.
Norwegian film “Pornopung” is directed by Johan Kaos and includes a long fellatio scene.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth” briefly includes real sex to “establish the unusual and dysfunctional lifestyle that results from the isolation orchestrated by the dictatorial father, including incest,” per the British Board of Film Classification.
John Waters’ 1972 film “Pink Flamingos” was banned in Australia due to a “close-up real depictions of actual fellatio….which unambiguously contravene R classification guidelines.” The scene in question features drag queen Divine, who performs real oral sex on the actor playing her son in the film.
Also known as “L’Inconnu du lac,” the French thriller premiered iat the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Director Alain Guiraudie won Best Director, and the film also took home the Queer Palm award. While there is nudity aplenty, “Stranger by the Lake” also contains scenes of unsimulated sex that were shot using body doubles.
The 2005 film, directed by Jessica Nilsson, features intercourse between Eileen Daly and Gry Bay and additional male actors, as well as fellatio with ejaculation performed by Daly on Mark Stevens, and cunnilingus performed by Ovidie on Bay. The famous scene was shot in lead actress Bay’s actual apartment.
Sean S. Baker’s “Starlet” contains a scene of penetration while set in the porn capital of the San Fernando Valley in Southern California.
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By Tara Austen Weaver
•
Aug 6, 2017

The author around the time she was first assaulted.
The Record's Jeannie Yandel speaks with Tara Weaver about her experiences with sexual assault.

By Melissa Spitz
•
Oct 14, 2016

By Beth Roberts
•
Oct 8, 2015

By Dr. Bob Hughes
•
Aug 6, 2017

Editor's note: Tara Weaver posted this essay on her personal Facebook page after the second presidential debate, when Donald Trump said that his talk of sexual assault was merely locker room banter. More than 4,400 people shared this story, and hundreds commented with their own devastating stories in the comments.
The first man who kissed me when I didn’t want him to was the boyfriend of my babysitter. He lifted me up by my armpits, sat me on the kitchen counter, leaned over me and slid his tongue into my mouth. I was eight years old.
I don’t know why he thought he could do this. I wasn’t acting sexy. I was reading Beverly Cleary books and wishing I could be a horse.
Do you think he had been listening to locker room banter?
The second time I was kissed I was twelve or thirteen. My mother’s boyfriend came into my room to say goodnight. He sat on my bed, ran his hand under the covers and put his fingers up inside me. It hurt. He made me hold his penis and rub it. He told me it was “safe” to have sex with him — he’d had a vasectomy and wouldn’t get me pregnant. He laughed.
I went to school the next day, sitting in class like nothing happened. I told my mother only that he had propositioned me, not anything else. It took twenty years and much therapy before I could tell her the full story, before I could admit it even to myself.
This man had known me since I was nine — he had two daughters. How had this happened? Had he started listening to locker room banter?
I pretended I was okay, but I tried to kill myself not long after that. Twice.
When I was fifteen I was date raped at summer camp by a boy I had a crush on. I said, “No.” I said, “Stop.” I tried pushing him away. Did he not hear me?
Perhaps his ears were too full of locker room banter.
The next day I tried to talk to him, to tell him what had happened wasn't okay. He looked at me with a blank face and dead eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
He acknowledged nothing. To him it was nothing. I was nothing.
I feared I was pregnant afterwards. I wept in relief when I wasn’t.
I blamed myself. Maybe I should have protested louder. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him hold my hand. But I thought he wanted to be my boyfriend. I thought wrong.
I ran into that boy at a Christmas party decades later. “Hey,” he said, smiling. “Long time, no see.”
I started wearing my brother’s clothes—baggy sweatshirts and jeans so big I had to roll down the waistband to keep them up. I gained weight. I didn’t drink alcohol in high school; it would have made me feel too vulnerable.
But simply being a woman made me vulnerable. There was nothing I could do to avoid that.
In college I was careful. If a guy showed interest and seemed safe and we started dating, I pretended to get drunk and pass out, just to see what he might do. Would he put a blanket over me and be kind, would he push me aside in disgust or anger at not getting what he wanted, or would he take the opportunity to go up my shirt or down my pants? I needed to know if I could trust him when no one was looking.
I chose well and never had to deal with the latter. Some guys don’t listen to locker room banter.
When I was twenty, I went running on a bike path along a river in the city where I was a student. There was a park and families came to enjoy the sunset in the evenings. Fishermen lined the water. It was a popular place.
That day had been rainy. The clouds cleared by late afternoon, but when I arrived the park was empty. I had never seen it like this.
As I ran, I heard footsteps that got louder — two men, running directly behind me. Turning my head I got a glimpse of them. They were not wearing running clothes.
I sped up, trying to outpace them. They sped up too. They began to grab my ass.
I whirled around to face them but they grabbed at my breasts. I broke off and ran away from them—faster this time, but they kept up. Their legs were longer, they were stronger, and there were two of them. They kept grabbing at me. I kept breaking away and trying to outrun them. I kept failing.
I could kick them in the shins, I thought, I could kick them in the balls. I had been learning how to play rugby; I knew how to tackle.
That was the thought that leapt unbidden to my mind: I wouldn’t want to hurt them.
I had been raised to see men, all people, as human, to be concerned about their welfare, to be a nurturer, to care. I had never listened to locker room banter.
I was also practical: I didn’t want the encounter to turn violent. They were bigger and they were stronger. If I ended up on the ground, I’d have no chance.
I kept pushing their hands away from my body. I wrenched one arm down so strongly I ripped the man’s watch off his wrist and it fell to the ground. He reached down to grab it, cursing.
In that brief pause it occurred to me to scream — the one thing I hadn’t tried. There was no one around to hear me, but I screamed anyway; I made as much noise as I could.
On the subway home, I sat on the hard, plastic seat rocking back and forth. There were four other people in the compartment: two male riders and a man and woman, holding hands. The train compartments did not have doors connecting the cars. I felt sick, panicked that the couple might get off at the next station and leave me in a closed compartment with two men. I no longer knew what they might be capable of.
I didn’t cry until my roommate came home that night. When I saw her, I burst into tears and she thought someone had died. She was not entirely wrong.
The next day I asked the dean of my academic program to go with me to the police station. We spent the afternoon looking at mug shots of known rapists. There were pages and pages of them.
Had they all been listening to locker room banter?
We didn’t find my attackers; I hadn’t expected we would. I wanted only for this crime to be recorded, to be a number. I wanted my pain to be counted.
The police told me it was the fault of the immigrants.
When I returned to school I explained to my professor why I had missed class. “What were you wearing?” she asked me.
“A long-sleeve, faded red sweatshirt and baggy shorts.
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