Given the fact that nearly a dozen films with explicit sex showed up at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, some might have wondered if Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine had made the selection.
Once again, the sexually charged films led to a debate about the thin line between pornography and art.
Repeated rape scenes and violence sickened several unsuspecting viewers when Irreversible was first screened in France two years ago. Directed by Gaspar Noe, its long-drawn and explicit scenes have made it one of the most notorious movies of all times. And yet, some found artistic merits in it. The film invited more controversy when it went to several festivals, including Toronto last year.
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Festivals across the world attract films that dare to question the standard depiction of nudity and sex. But even by prevailing standards, several films clearly crossed boundaries.
No recent film festival in my memory has shown as many -- there were over a dozen -- films with explicit sex scenes.
Michael Winterbottom, whose films such as In this World and Welcome To Sarajevo have been critically praised across the world, came to Toronto with Nine Songs.
Based on a French novel, the film is a love story about a young couple in London. Explicit sex scenes are spliced with scenes from live performances by a number of hard rock bands. Remove about 15 minutes from the hour-long movie, and you could assume you were watching a well-shot porno flick!
What is even more startling is the fact that Kieran O'Brien, an actor in many television films in England, readily agreed to do them. No body doubles were used either for him or for his co-star, newcomer Margaret Stilley.
In the production notes, Winterbottom says when he read the book he wondered why such explicit sensuality does not exist in films made by mainstream directors. Once he made up his mind to make the film, getting artists became his biggest challenge.
While Winterbottom is still a mainstream director, Catherine Breillat (like Noe of Irreversible) considers herself as an agent provocateur and radical filmmaker. She believes women need not feel ashamed of their bodies at any time.
Her latest movie, Anatomie de L'enfer (Anatomy of Hell), focusing on four days in the life of an enigmatic woman and a misogynist, created quite a stir.
In it, the woman knows the man doesn't like women. She wants him to look at her from an angle from which she should never be viewed. 'It will cost you,' he says. 'I'll pay you,' she replies.
She tells him he can watch her without clothes, doing whatever she chooses to do, but he shouldn't touch her. The two soon have sex though, and there is nothing left to the imagination.
Halfway through the movie, when the sex acts took a particular turn, many in the audience gasped. Some walked out a few minutes later.
Breillat announces in the credit titles that an artist -- not the movie's lead actress Amira Kasar -- participated in the explicit and intimate sex acts. But Kasar does appear in many nude scenes. The male actor, Rocco Siffredi, is a porno star in Italy.
Many would think Breillat's film is nothing but pornography disguised as art. But Breillat defends her work, claiming it held deep philosophical meanings. In the Hebrew book of Genesis, 'secret' is the same word as 'nudity,' she said, literally 'that which must not be seen.'
"Intimacy is the greatest possible taboo that leaves you speechless," she said.
There was explicit sex in the American film Kinsey as well, but it wasn't one tenth as explicit and shocking as the content in Nine Songs or gratuitous and repulsive as in Anatomy Of Hell.
Kinsey, which has generated bigger Oscar buzz than many other American contenders such as Ray, has Liam Neeson in the title role as one of America's pioneering sex researchers.
Alfred Kinsey's frank discussion of sexuality and revelation of American sexual mores and behaviour, resulting from his extended research over a decade, shocked Americans in the 1950s.
Director Bill Condon, whose Gods And Monsters fetched him an Oscar for its script, said he was worried the film's sexual content could create problems for it. But he was relieved when it was given the R rating, which meant anyone below 17 had to see it with parents or guardians.
"It's a movie about sex, but it's not meant to be salacious in any way," he explained.
"I was trying to lull you into this world that's kind of pretty," Condon told a press conference in Toronto, "and then all of a sudden, there's a close up of a vagina and penis. It's so hard to shock people these days that you want to create a world where that doesn't exist, which reminds you of just what a revolutionary this man was."
Kinsey's research was first published more than 50 years ago, but Condon thinks some Americans could still be outraged.
"Kinsey has remained a lightning rod for certain religious groups, who are already active on the Internet criticising a movie they haven't seen," he said.
Neeson echoed Condon's remarks, saying, "Sex is controversial. It always has been and it always will be."
He added that he enjoyed playing Kinsey, and was glad he had taken up the film. As for the rage and anger the film may produce, he said, "The more controversial, the better."
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