Love Scenes in American Movies Are Getting Even Worse

By Mick LaSalle

Katherine Heigl at a KNOCKED UP premiere in 2007. The trend begins . . .

For decades, love scenes in American movies have been the worst in the western world.  They usually take place solely as a plot point, before the characters get to know each other, so there’s no quality of longing about them.  They often take place standing up — don’t try that at home –which is invariably presented as the easiest thing in the world to do, because, according to the movies, American women never wear any undergarments below the waist.

Or, if in a comedy, the sex usually takes place only after two people, in their lust, destroy an entire apartment and presumably have sex with the apartment door open.

There are sociological reasons for both tendencies, which I wrote about THE BEAUTY OF THE REAL, but that’s not the topic under discussion now.  What I want to talk about is how American movie sex scenes have recently managed to take a turn for the worse, as though that were possible.

The new trend in Hollywood movies is to show people having sex for the first time . . . with the woman fully clothed.

Now this is not a plea for more nudity.  Shut the lights, pull up the sheets, have the lovers go under the covers, shoot from behind furniture — all that is fine.  And all those options are available if the actress doesn’t want to take her clothes off.  That’s perfectly reasonable.  If I were an actress, I wouldn’t want to take my clothes off, either.  But please don’t insult our intelligence and don’t misrepresent sex as it’s actually practiced in America.  It is giving the rest of the world a really strange impression of us.

This trend has been around for a while but bubbled to public awareness in KNOCKED UP, in the early scene where Katherine Heigl leaves her underwear on while having sex with Seth Rogen.  This struck me at the time as quite an oversight on the part of the character played by Rogen, indicating extreme impatience and a profound lack of curiosity.

But it was brought to mind again watching John Turturro, as a male prostitute, have a fully clothed menage a trois with Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara in the upcoming FADING GIGOLO.

Again, this is not a plea for nudity.  Shoot it in some way that we don’t see anything.  But don’t present a sex scene that makes us think the women are weird and the man is downright demented.

Instead of watching the scene, I’m thinking, “What is wrong with this guy?  When did he die, and why he still able to walk and talk?”

I can only wonder what European women must expect when they arrive in the United States.