January is the perfect season for sex. Indeed, the cold weather is an excellent excuse to explore your fantasies. Yes, perfect. Because the cold forces bodies to get closer, because evenings stretch out under low lights, because boredom is a powerful trigger for fantasies. So here are 10 super-sexy movies to watch or re-watch to enjoy the thrill.
And when you love sex – the real kind, the kind that titillates the imagination, disturbs a little, excites a lot – cinema is a formidable weapon.
Not mechanical porn. But those films that have aroused desires, curiosities and cravings we didn’t yet dare to name. Some have educated entire generations. Others continue to light the fires of today.
Here are 10 cult films, sometimes explicit, often disturbing, to be watched with one clear intention: to feel like it.
Reawakening desire when it’s numb (but not dead)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Synopsis
It all begins with a phrase uttered in the couple’s intimate circle. A belated, badly digested sexual confession that shatters the reassuring image of a bourgeois marriage. He goes out into the night. A strange, cottony night, saturated with temptations. Every encounter seems to open a door: a woman too direct, an evening too elegant, a secret ritual where bodies are offered but masked. Sex is everywhere, omnipresent, but always out of reach. Desire feeds on what it cannot consume.
Why it’s so exciting
Because the film engages the imagination to the point of obsession.
Watch it if…
You like it when fantasy takes control before the body.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Synopsis
Two neighbors meet by chance, on narrow staircases, too-close corridors and rain-soaked streets. They discover that their spouses are cheating on them… together. They talk, walk, eat, tell each other stories. Desire slowly takes hold, almost in spite of themselves. They know full well what could happen. They choose not to give in. Every silence becomes sexual tension. Every glance a delayed caress.
Why it’s erotic
Because frustrated desire is a slow, almost unbearable climb.
Watch it if…
You like it when lack makes your heart (and everything else) beat faster.
Fantasies, domination, power plays
Secretary (2002)
Synopsis
A fragile young woman, scarred by self-mutilation and shame, enters the service of a cold, rigid, almost inhuman man. Very quickly, something non-verbal sets in: implicit rules, silent authority, constant tension. Punishments become expected. Desired. The film explores a relationship where submission is not about humiliation, but about reclaiming oneself through the body.
Why it bothers (and excites)
Because it shows that desire can be born where we least expect it.
Watch it if…
You’re curious about what turns you on when power changes hands.
9½ Weeks (1986)
Synopsis
An encounter. Then a relationship that quickly slides into an erotic terrain structured by games, scenarios and sensory experiences. The rules are never clearly laid down. Pleasure builds, becomes ritualized, then starts to worry. Desire becomes invasive, almost hypnotic.
Why it’s cult
Because this film laid the foundations for a modern erotic imagination, slow and scripted.
Watch it if…
You like sex when it’s role-playing.
Assumed voyeurism, unfiltered curiosity
The Dreamers (2003)
Synopsis
Paris, 1968. Three young adults lock themselves in an apartment while the outside world goes up in flames. Bodies are revealed, provoked and tested. We play at looking, at being looked at, at crossing limits without always naming them. Desire flows freely, without urgency, in a suspended atmosphere.
Why it’s exciting
Because looking becomes a sexual act in its own right.
To watch if…
You like the thrill of the in-between.
Shortbus (2006)
Synopsis
In New York, characters in search of orgasm, connection or simply contact cross paths. Bodies are shown as they are: imperfect, sincere, committed. Sex is real, visible, but never cynical.
Why it’s disturbing
Because the film shows pleasure without hierarchy or performance.
Watch it if…
You like to explore multiple, uninhibited sexual universes.
Explicit sex, unvarnished desire
Love (2015)
Synopsis
From the very first minutes, the film sets the tone: sex will be neither metaphorical nor off-screen. A man wakes up alone, haunted by the memory of a passionate and destructive relationship. Through his reminiscences, the film unfolds a love story told almost exclusively through the body.
We witness real, unsimulated sex scenes, filmed head-on, with no music to soften or editing to reassure. There’s one scene in particular that has become emblematic – and shocking for many – where intimacy is shown at its rawest: two bodies embracing, totally exposed, in an almost naive abandon, almost violent in its sincerity. No “wise” aestheticism to protect the gaze. Just reality.
But what’s most disturbing isn’t the sex itself. It’s what it tells us about: the illusion that passion is enough, the confusion between sexual intensity and lasting love, the way desire can become a prison.
Why it’s explicitly disturbing
Because the film refuses to accept any comfortable distance. It forces the viewer to look at sex as an emotional memory, not as a performance. We’re not aroused “against” the film, but with it, sometimes in spite of ourselves.
Viewing tips
Watch with the understanding that this film may awaken :
- memories,
- frustrations,
- comparisons.
Clearly not a neutral film. But a film that leaves its mark.
Nymphomaniac (2013)
Synopsis
A woman is found wounded in an alley. She is taken in by a cultured, benevolent, almost paternalistic man. Over the course of an entire night, she tells him about her sex life – without trying to seduce or deliberately shock. Just telling.
The stories follow one another: first experiences, accumulation of partners, compulsive search for sensations, sexual scenes shown in a crude, sometimes clinical way. Here again, some of the images are shocking in their directness: bodies lined up, mechanical gestures, a total absence of romance. Sex is shown as a need, sometimes devoid of pleasure, sometimes violent in its repetition.
The film alternates between extremely explicit scenes and almost intellectual commentary, creating a disturbing contrast: sex is never idealized, but dissected, analyzed, sometimes stripped of its magic.
Why it’s radically different
Because it’s not a “sexy” film in the classic sense. It’s a film that asks a brutal question: what’s left of desire when it’s consumed without limit? That’s precisely where the malaise comes from: we’re watching sex, but we’re not quite sure why. And this loss of bearings is deliberate.
Viewing tips
A must-see if you like films that don’t flatter the fantasy, but put it to the test. This is not a film for “getting hot quick”. It’s a film to confront your own vision of desire.
Closing remarks
These films are there to remind us of one thing: explicit sex isn’t automatically exciting. But it is always revealing.
The films cited here divide, disturb and sometimes repel – and that’s precisely why they belong here. Because they show what a lot of content avoids: unfiltered desire, with no reassuring narrative, no promise of a happy ending. Desire, sex. Something to warm you up for January!
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