Why aren’t movies sexy anymore? Sex and movies have
gone hand in hand since the beginning of the art form. Movies became so sexy
and daring they had to create a code with the church, banning anything too risqué.
However, Hollywood found ways to keep sex in the movies while still adhering to
the code as seen in Hitchcock’s Notorious.
That code was lifted
and the current MPAA was instated and sex filled the movies again. Once upon a
time the dreaded NC-17 and X ratings belonged to prestigious films such as Last Tango in Paris and Midnight Cowboy. In the Regan era when
the sexual revolution died with the spread of AIDs there sexy movies like 9 ½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction. The 90’s
were filled with a slew of erotic thrillers from Basic Instinct to Eyes Wide Shut
where sex, specifically more daring and atypical sex was showcased. Since then,
sex in the movies, serious sexy sex not the comedic raunchy sex, has dwindled
into extinction with little, sexy independent films like Secretary and The Dreamers,
but never anything mainstream.
Then
comes along Fifty Shades of Grey, the
bestselling book with graphic accounts of a BDSM relationship, and Hollywood
has a chance to make mainstream movies sexy again. But it wasn’t. There was
sex, but it wasn’t particularly sexy. The sexiest scene involved ice cubes in
the exact same way as 9 ½ Weeks, where it was done much, much better.
The
lack of sexiness in Fifty Shades of was the culmination of a few things. The first was
the script. The pacing and the development of the central relationship and
characters were completely lacking. They treated the script as if it were an
action movie, where everything in-between the explosions is basically filler, except
instead of explosions it was sex. This was supposed to be about two characters
falling in love and having very kinky sex, but was more about two characters
kind of liking each other and talking about having kinky sex and having it in the
least sexy way possible, then talking about it some more. It was closer to a
real life sexual relationship than the fantasy found in the book. Also, the
book is specifically about Anastasia Steele’s transformation into
womanhood sexually and personally. While
she’s exploring this new sexual awakening she is also graduating college and
getting her first full time job. She’s growing up. This is almost completely
void in the film and focuses more on what she is in relation to Mr. Grey
instead of who she is as a person.
The
casting was another unsexy mishap. Though Dakota Johnson did a great job of
giving Anastasia as much depth as she could, Jamie Doran’s Mr. Grey was
terribly miscast. He is supposed to the fantasy man de jour: tall, strong,
confident, and sexy. He seemed more like a little boy who needed to control his
more experienced girlfriend, when it’s supposed to be other way around.
Dakota’s Anastasia had more sexual confidence than Jamie’s Christian would ever
have. I was waiting for her to pick up a whip and smack him around for awhile.
I wanted this movie to be
incredible. A female driven story with a female screenwriter and female
director should have been the trifecta of awesome, but it wasn’t. It felt as
though the producers were too scared to make the sexy and daring film that has
challenged and succeeded in the past. Hollywood needs to remember how to take
risks, maybe then films can be sexy again.
