Too much or not enough ? Sex scenes in cinema, although increasingly rare, are the subject of debate. Some blame an era at the crossroads between the feminist MeToo movement and a puritanism exacerbated by American politics. Others, the need to please all audiences in foreign markets, including the most prudish who are easy to censor.

Stephen Follows, whose specialty is the analysis of cinematographic data, wanted to get to the bottom of it. To do this, he analyzed the 250 highest-grossing films in the United States, each year since 2000. He found that the number of sex scenes had fallen by almost 40% in 25 years. While in 2000, more than 80% of the most profitable films included an episode of a sexual nature, today there are barely one in two.

However, torrid scenes in the cinema have not completely disappeared from the big screens and, when they find their place there, they are even very explicit, unimaginable even twenty or thirty years ago. Among the latest examples: the film Poor Creatures with Emma Stone which attracted a lot of attention. One of the passages of the film features the protagonist – who then happily indulges in prostitution – sleeping with one of her clients in front of the latter’s two sons, whom he has decided to bring to his meeting you so they can take notes and learn. This scene even had to be modified to be broadcast in English theaters.

Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn also shows on screen several scenes of a sexual nature which have loosened the leagues of virtues. The character Oliver, for example, performs an oral sex session on Venetia while she is on her period. In another scene, Oliver simulates a sexual act at the grave of the man who was the object of his desire. Assimilated to necrophilia, it is around this extract that many discussions have revolved. Full-frontal nudity, long taboo in Hollywood, is also more accepted, like Challengers, released in April, which hides nothing of the bodies of athletes in their shower.

With these delicate scenes to produce, intimacy coordinators – responsible for liaising between directors and actors and choreographing sex scenes – have become essential figures for the smooth running of filming. Essential, but not for everyone. Some actors like Jennifer Aniston (Friends) or Sean Bean (Games of Thrones) consider them unnecessary and attenuating the spontaneity of filming. Intimacy coordinators, sometimes mocked, as in the series The Idol which ridicules the profession in its pilot episode, can be considered a reflection of a censored era fearing carnal deviations, all the more so since MeToo.

On the other hand, other cinema personalities, like Kristen Stewart, flatter the profession. The actress said she enjoyed working with an intimacy coordinator for her film Love lies bleeding, and tells Yahoo Entertainment that it helped create scenes that felt “real” and have “open and enjoyable conversations.” about what each actor wanted, instead of being “thrown” into the scenes in question as she says was the case earlier in her career.

Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coordinator who participated in the filming of Normal People or Sex Education, compares her job to that of stunt coordinators who, in the same way, must choreograph certain scenes while ensuring their usefulness in the storyline as well. as well as the safety of the actors. In response to detractors of the profession, she replied in the columns of Madame Figaro: “There can be no freedom without a framework.”

As for the new generation, the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at the University of California at Los Angeles conducted a survey of young students. They had to rank 19 subjects in order of those they preferred to watch in films. “Romance or Sex” came thirteenth. In seventh position, we find “content that does not include sex or romance”. The future of cinema could become more and more modest.