Poor Things, Saltburn, All Of Us Strangers: Get ready for sex on screen in 2024
If you’ve read anything about Emma Stone’s latest film Poor Things, you’ll know the big takeaway: there’s lots and lots of sex.
Stone plays Bella Baxter, a woman who was pregnant before she died, only for a scientist to bring her back to life and replace her brain with that of the still-living baby. (Yes, you read that correctly). Bella has the mind of an infant, but the needs of a young woman discovering what life is all about.
The story of a Frankenstein-inspired sex-obsessive might sound too bizarre to work, but the film has been universally praised by critics and is already winning awards – Stone was named best actress at the Golden Globes at the weekend. And it’s not the only movie currently making headlines for its NSFW sex scenes (or not suitable for watching with your parents, as many found out the hard way over Christmas).
Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal star in All Of Us Strangers. Pic: Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures
Filmmaker Emerald Fennell‘s class satire Saltburn features full-frontal nudity, graphic sex, and a bathwater scene that will leave you speechless, while also out this month is Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal’s All Of Us Strangers, a film that is both tender and explicit.
But is all this a turn-off for younger audiences? Age classification – the desire for a film to be seen by as many eyes possible – and changing cinematic tastes have made sex on screen something of a rarity nowadays.
Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Pic: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures
Poor Things has certainly left wide-eyed critics questioning their own prurient curiosity over the sheer amount of times Stone’s character goes at it.
“I’m a producer on the film, so we definitely talked a lot about all of it,” the Oscar-winning star told Sky News. “It was very clear to me from the beginning that it was necessary because [Bella’s] not ashamed of what’s going on with her. So why would WE be?”
Sex is just one element of Bella’s experience, Stone says. “She’s soaking in everything for the first time: food, politics, philosophy, dancing, travel and, yes, sex. She’s just exploring everything and seeing what works for her… to me, it just furthers what she’s learning.”
‘She’s soaking in everything for the first time’. Pic: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures/20th Century Studios
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From today’s cultural perspective, movies such as Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction – filmed by men and centred on the desires of men – haven’t exactly aged well. And you only need to look at the ever-declining levels of nudity throughout each season of Game Of Thrones to see how attitudes towards sex, particularly women and sex, have changed even since that first series in 2011.
Stone’s co-star Mark Ruffalo, who plays Baxter’s love (or sex) interest, says sex on screen is less gratuitous than it used to be – but argues the sex scenes in Poor Things are necessary.
“That’s a big part of our lives,” he says. “You don’t see it a lot anymore. It feels a little Victorian, in a way.”
Mark Ruffalo plays the sex interest alongside Stone. Pic: Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures
And in the last 12 months, sex on screen has made a bit of a comeback. Notably, Christopher Nolan wrote his first-ever sex scene into Oppenheimer, feeling the story necessitated it.
Saltburn, meanwhile, has divided critics, with some saying the graphic sex scenes do not make up for holes in the plot.
The bathwater scene in particular has prompted heated arguments online from those, mostly younger viewers, who argue sex on screen is inherently problematic – triggering to those who don’t want to watch it, exploitative to those made to act it out.
A recent UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Gen Z study found nearly half of the respondents felt sex wasn’t needed for the plot in most TV shows and films, while more than half wanted to see more platonic storylines.
Don’t watch it with your parents: Barry Keoghan has some graphic scenes in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Pic: MGM/Amazon Studios
Speaking to Sky News last year, Fennell disagreed with those findings: “I think that that has been blown out of proportion… I think that was quite a small study and, well, I’m not sure that it’s true.”
While the #MeToo movement prompted a more cautious approach from Hollywood to how sex was depicted, one school of thought is that what we’re seeing now are post-pandemic films born out of a desire to rip off those face masks.
“It certainly feels like a post-COVID world,” said Fennell. “That the things of the body were not allowed to be touched. The more I think about it, the more I understand that’s where it comes from.”
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Rather than gratuitous nudity for the sake of it, as a filmmaker Fennell believes it’s about using sex to widen the lens of what she can say with her stories.
“Rarely you see anything like below the shoulder blades [in Saltburn], so the sex scenes in this film are all actually our own imagination.”
If sex on screen leaves you hot under the collar, it’s time to compose yourself – because film in 2024 is getting full-on.
Poor Things is showing in cinemas, All Of Us Strangers from 26 January. Saltburn is streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
The Salt Path author Raynor Winn’s fourth book has been delayed by her publisher.
It comes amid claims that the author lied about her story in her hit first book. Winn previously described the claims as “highly misleading” and called suggestions that her husband had Moth made up his illness “utterly vile”.
In a statement, Penguin Michael Joseph, said it had delayed the publication of Winn’s latest book On Winter Hill – which had been set for release 23 October.
The publisher said the decision had been made in light of “recent events, in particular intrusive conjecture around Moth’s health”, which it said had caused “considerable distress” to the author and her family.
“It is our priority to support the author at this time,” the publisher said.
“With this in mind, Penguin Michael Joseph, together with the author, has made the decision to delay the publication of On Winter Hill from this October.”
A new release date will be announced in due course, the publisher added.
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Winn’s first book, released in 2018, detailed the journey she and husband took along the South West Coast Path – familiarly known as The Salt Path – after they lost their family farm and Moth received a terminal health diagnosis of Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD).
But a report in The Observer disputed key aspects of the 2018 “true” story – which was recently turned into a film starring Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson.
Raynor and husband Moth (centre) with actors Jason Isaacs (L) and Gillian Anderson (R). Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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As part of the article, published last weekend, The Observer claimed to have spoken to experts who were “sceptical” about elements of Moth’s terminal diagnosis, such as a “lack of acute symptoms and his apparent ability to reverse them”.
In the ensuing controversy, PSPA, a charity that supports people with CBD, cut ties with the couple.
The Observer article also claimed the portrayal of a failed investment in a friend’s business wasn’t true, but said the couple – whose names are Sally and Tim Walker – lost their home after Raynor Winn embezzled money from her employer and had to borrow to pay it back and avoid police action.
Anderson played Winn in a movie about the couple’s journey. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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It also said that, rather than being homeless, the couple had owned a house in France since 2007.
Winn’s statement said the dispute with her employer wasn’t the reason the couple lost their home – but admitted she may have made “mistakes” while in the job.
“For me it was a pressured time,” she wrote. “It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.”
She admitted being questioned by police but said she wasn’t charged.
The author also said accusations that Moth lied about having CBD/CBS were false and had “emotionally devastated” him.
“I have charted Moth’s condition with such a level of honesty, that this is the most unbearable of the allegations,” Winn wrote on her website.
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