17. Bound (1996)
There’s a lot of sizzle and spark in the Wachowskis’ feature film directorial debut, the fervid, sensual, stylish, and violent neo-noir, Bound. Jennifer Tilly is Violet, ex-girlfriend of the hotheaded gangster, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) and Gina Gershon is Corky, her ex-con neighbour and passionate lover.
As Violet and Corky hatch a convoluted plot for Violet to break away from the mob for good, with the goods, Bound unravels and progresses amidst their transgressive relationship with modernist kink, but Hitchcockian embellishment and Tarantino-esque asides and interludes––this is a mid-90s crime film after all––and the payoff is as sweet as the gay sex scenes are tasteful, tactful, yet very provocative. Gershon and Tilly make for a provocative pair.
16. Romeo is Bleeding (1993)
Overfull with violence and kink, this neo-noir from Peter Mendak (The Changeling) is a full-throttle thrill ride that grabs the viewer from the start and is buoyed by solid performances and surprising chemistry between leads Gary Oldman and Lena Olin.
Corrupt cop Jack Grimaldi (Oldman) takes money from the Mafia, cheats on his loving wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra), has a willing come-hither mistress Sheri (Juliette Lewis) and is soon swept up in shenanigans with a Russian assassin named Mona Demarkov (Olin). Jack can’t keep all this up in the air for long and the fireworks that follow are equal parts hilarious and horrendous.
Romeo is Bleeding takes its name from a brutal little ballad from Tom Waits and if that isn’t good enough for you, well, maybe Oldman’s cynical narration––a hallmark of early noirs––this may be the forgotten 90s sleeper that seduces you in its tantalizing leg lock.
15. In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Japanese director Nagisa Oshima became synonymous with notoriety with this incredibly controversial erotic thriller which features unsimulated sex between many cast members, pushing the boundaries of arthouse acceptability and prying at social mores in Japan, specifically at how eroticism was viewed in that country at that time.
Set in Tokyo in 1936, Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) is a former prostitute now working as a menial servant and about to begin a torrid affair with her employer Kichizō Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji), who’s married.
Sada and Ishida become particularly infatuated with erotic asphyxiation, the results of which are disastrous for them. Their unhealthy obsession culminates in an ending so upsetting and unforgettable that I won’t go into it here but I will say, for those who’ve never seen the film, that it’s quite shocking and once you’ve witnessed it, well, you can’t unsee it. You’ve been warned.
14. Swimming Pool (2003)
While François Ozon’s celebrated Hitchcockian thriller is ripe with eroticism and playful paranoia and sports A-list lead talent from the always on game Charlotte Rampling, the real head-turner here is dreamy Ludivine Sagnier.
Ozon and co-writer Emmanuèle Bernheim have crafted a complex psychological stunner about a famous mystery writer, Sarah Morton (Rampling), now middle-aged and fighting writer’s block. Sarah’s publisher, John Bosload (Charles Dance), graciously offers her his country house in Lacoste, France, for some peace and quiet and hopefully to stimulate her muse.
It would be all fine and well were it not for John’s promiscuous daughter, Julie (Sagnier), who appears out of the ether it would seem, to share the house and bed all the red-blooded men in town.
This being an Ozon film, not everything is as it seems and there’s more than a few ambiguities, upsets, and sultry surprises in store as Sarah’s and Julie’s paths intersect and the line between fantasy and reality blurs.
13. Femme Fatale (2002)
Certainly Brian De Palma’s most underrated film, Femme Fatale is a Euro-trash treasure that fearlessly manipulates the viewer into a time warping mystery with sexual excitement front and center. Long-legged Laura Ash (Rebecca Romijn) is a career criminal losing track of all the people she’s double-crossed in a botched diamond heist.
This chic shocker also inserts a nosy photographer named Nicolas (Antonio Banderas), a sexy supermodel named Veronica (Rie Rasmussen) and a wealthy Parisian blueblood named Lily (Romijn, again) in a self-aware thriller that oozes style, drips danger, and, if the adventurous viewer is game for it, throws some twists that are either absolutely insane or a stroke of inspired genius, depending on how you feel about De Palma. I love De Palma and this is one of his most provocative and daring detours. Don’t miss it.
12. The Last Seduction (1994)
From seemingly out of nowhere director John Dahl (Rounders) dropped this red-hot scorcher of an erotic thriller featuring a never better Linda Fiorentino as Bridget Gregory, an unhappily married telemarketer with a deadbeat hubby (Bill Pullman) who she talks into selling some hardcore street drugs to some shady dealers. Before long Bridget has the ill gotten gains, has ditched the dead weight and is on the run––bedding bad boys in femme fatale fashion on the way, of course
As a modern noir, The Last Seduction is very efficient, very raunchy, and will satisfy genre fans with it’s quick wit, enjoyable thrills, and smouldering allurement courtesy of Fiorentino. That she hasn’t been used as well in a film since is the real crime, if you ask me.
11. Fatal Attraction (1987)
A cultural phenomenon when it was released in 1987, Adrian Lyne’s infidelity nightmare Fatal Attraction was a surprisingly well-received psychological squeaker that, in North America at least, prompted open discussion on the consequences and misgivings of unfaithfulness and adultery.
Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) is a happily married New Yorker, and a successful attorney who meets a similarly successful woman named Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) and a sensuous affair ensues. Soon Alex is stalking Dan at every turn and his married life to faithful wife Beth (Anne Archer) and family are imperiled.
Fatal Attraction transgresses, at times, to slasher movie mentality and has more than a few regrettable clichés, but it’s also solidly directed with many shocking set pieces (two words: bunny boiler), outstanding performances, and carnal earthquakes.
10. Crash (1996)
While David Cronenberg’s version of Crash contains considerably less of the explicit sex found in the J.G Ballard source novel, it’s still a polarizing study of modern pathologies. Shot with an icy and detached formalism, Crash won a Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival for originality, for daring and for audacity.
The ensemble cast is in fine form and includes Rosanna Arquette, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, James Spader, and Deborah Kara Unger as an almost cult-like assemblage of people who take extreme sexual pleasure via automobile accidents.
Images of sex and violence are strongly juxtaposed in a guilefully fetishized manner which is easily too much for old-fashioned audiences in what Roger Ebert described as: “…like a porno movie made by a computer: It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original.”
9. Basic Instinct (1992)
The double threat of provocateur director Paul Verhoeven and sleazy writer Joe Eszterhas is gloriously overshadowed by underwearless Sharon Stone in this transgressive exploitation blockbuster.
Famously controversial upon its initial release for its graphic violence and explicit sex, and also for how it depicts its homosexual characters as psychopaths, Basic Instinct nevertheless became something of a cultural touchstone. Over the passing years so much of Basic Instinct now plays out like camp, that every character in the film is unlikeable and lecherous makes it all the more easy to swallow.
Michael Douglas is thoroughly gross as down-and-out Detective Nick Curran, trying to solve some ice-pick murders when suddenly femme fatale Catherine Tramell (Stone) starts manipulating him, his pants, and his investigation.
This comedy of bad manners, innuendo, and cocaine-fuelled foreplay is dirty fun if you remember to check your brain at the door (more than a few plot holes fail to add up and the final shot is a bit of an insult). Wet dreams are made of this, apparently.