It is legitimate to wonder whether Hollywood, in its most recent version, has entered a phase of renewed puritanism, of tactile coldness, of censorship that is not imposed but internalised. It is not a violent conservative reaction or an explicit crusade, but a more subtle, more structural disaffection towards sex understood as language, as narrative impulse, as political place. As if desire had ceased to be a territory for narrating the human. As if bodies had lost their right to speak.
The question of this detachment became public after the publication of the Oscar 2024 nominations, when titles such as Challengers by Luca Guadagnino and Babygirl by Halina Reijn – both films in which desire is not only insinuated, but structured, thought, danced, played – were simply ignored. Two deeply sensual works, yes, but also formally impeccable, contemporary, charged with visual and emotional intelligence. The omission was not only artistic. It was symbolic.
Challengers had been the object of collective desire for months, viral on networks, dissected by fashion editors, pop culture experts and auteur film fans. The story of the love triangle between Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist was a choreography of power, affection and sexual tension – on a tennis court that becomes a metaphor and battleground. Everything was meticulously constructed, from the rhythmic editing to the winning music by Reznor and Ross. And yet, when the nominations came in, it was as if it hadn’t existed.
Something similar happened with Babygirl, the film starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson, which arrived in theatres as a Christmas present and was presented in Venice with full honours. Halina Reijn wove a narrative about female sexuality that did not need to be disguised as provocative: it was direct, intimate, psychological. An exquisite acting job that won Kidman the Volpi Cup. But even that was not enough to attract the Academy’s gaze. Many simply assumed that ‘it was to be expected’. And that ‘to be expected’ is, in itself, a worrying sign.
Images have become infinite but also interchangeable, the body has lost its sacredness. And cinema, instead of going against the tide, seems to have joined in this erotic anaesthesia. A study published by The Economist in 2024, based on the analyses of researcher Stephen Follows, confirmed that sexual scenes have decreased by 40% in the last two decades. But it is not just the quantity. It is the quality of these depictions that has also mutated. Less flesh, more correction. Less skin, more metaphor. What used to be exploration territory – from Last Tango in Paris to Eyes Wide Shut – is now at risk of cancellation or commercial exclusion.
The contrast with certain exceptions is revealing. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things managed to introduce sex not as an ornament or provocation, but as an essential part of the life journey of its protagonist, Bella Baxter. Emma Stone offered a character who, in discovering her body, was also discovering the world. A form of sexuality that is not dominated, not domesticated, but fluid, even philosophical. The body not as an object, but as a subject. In this reading, Poor Things was an exception that proves the rule.
On the other side of the spectrum, Oppenheimer, the season’s big winner, represented the opposite paradigm. A cerebral, masculine, asexual epic. Nolan, with his usual style, constructed a story where the body does not exist. Only the mind, ambition, calculation. The sex scene with Florence Pugh seemed placed almost as an awkward stumble, an interruption. And yet Oppenheimer was elevated to essential cinema. Perhaps because that is how seriousness is measured today: by the absence of flesh.
It is easy to fall into obvious explanations: that cinema today seeks mass audiences, that platforms impose algorithms that penalise content with age restrictions, that the Marvel model – with its universe where love is a whisper and desire an anecdote – has transformed the audiovisual narrative. But that would be simplifying. Because the omission of sex is not just a market strategy. It is also a cultural symptom.
Sex has become paradoxically ubiquitous and marginal. It is everywhere and nowhere. Its representation is simultaneously more explicit and less meaningful. The hyper-availability of porn has blurred the boundaries between the intimate and the public. And at the same time, new generations are moving away from sex as a lived experience. According to recent studies, young people are having less sex than previous generations, expressing higher levels of dissatisfaction, and many are even foregoing sex altogether. Not out of repression, but out of redefinition.
This does not imply a regression. On the contrary, it reveals a new awareness: consent, respect, the desacralisation of frequency as an indicator of health. But it can also imply a detachment that affects fiction. Because if desire is no longer lived, neither is it represented. Or at least not in the same way.
Cinema has stopped showing us how to desire. It no longer shows us how to look at ourselves, how to touch ourselves. Not even when the story demands it. Just think of the recent Twisters, a production of high emotional voltage where romance is present but never consummated. According to rumour, it was Steven Spielberg who asked to eliminate the kissing scene between the protagonists. Not for censorship, but for narrative economy. As if love could suffice without eros. As if emotion had to do without the physical.
In the face of this tendency, oases emerge. Richard Linklater, with Hit Man, allows himself to film sex as part of the bond between adults who desire each other. Without emphasis, without the need to justify it. Simply as another dimension of the story. A bed scene with humour and pleasure. Something almost revolutionary today.
And while Hollywood becomes more aseptic, Italy dares to recover the tradition of the narrative body from another place. Series like Supersex, films like Diva Futura or the imminent Mrs. Playmen explore the history of Italian eroticism not as nostalgia, but as archive. From Rocco Siffredi to Ilona Staller, via Adelina Tattilo’s editorial rebellion, the narrative of desire becomes heritage, cultural chronicle, memory device.
Perhaps it is not a question of demanding more sex scenes on screen, but of recovering the value of desire as an aesthetic category. To rethink the body as language, not as a threat. To allow the characters to return to being adults who touch each other, who look for each other, who make mistakes, who also understand each other through their skin. Who desire each other without fear.
Miu Miu and Catherine Martin offer a cinematographic encounter.
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