From the X-rated Stranger by the Lake to Éric Rohmer’s sultry seaside comedy Pauline at the Beach, here are 12 films to add to your watchlist this summer
Pauline at the Beach (Éric Rohmer, 1983)
Éric Rohmer’s sultry seaside comedy follows 15-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) as she embarks on a holiday to remember with older cousin Marion (Arielle Domblase), a blonde bombshell who enjoys courting male attention. Jockeying for position are pouting romantic Pierre (Pascal Greggory), and Henri (Féodor Atkine), a self-styled Casanova who passes off his sexual incontinence as courage. Caught in the middle is Pauline, who sees through the players in this farce despite her tender years.
Summer With Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Ingmar Bergman’s coming-of-age drama is ripe with the thrill of sexual discovery, scandalous for its nude scene with star Harriet Andersson that sparked a moral panic in the US. Later recut for drive-in theatre audiences as Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl, it’s a beautiful early film from the Swedish master of mope whose images sear themselves on to the brain, as formative moments in life inevitably will.
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Set by the shores of stunning Lac Sainte-Croix, Alain Giraudie’s 2013 scorcher brings X-rated sex and a little light murder to while away the summer evenings. When Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) starts bathing at a local cruising spot in Provence, his eye is drawn to studly Michel (Christophe Paou), a wolfish presence whose boyfriend later shows up drowned in the lake. A crisis of lust versus conscience follows in this canny Hitchcockian thriller, full of painterly, sun-dappled friezes of men wanking off into the bushes.
La Piscine (Jacques Deray, 1969)
An erotic thriller featuring three stone-cold sex symbols of the era, Jacques Deray’s La Piscine is a story of roiling sexual tensions set under the Cote D’Azur sun. The film stars Alain Delon in a series of exemplary poolside looks as Jean-Paul, a writer living la dolce vita with his girlfriend Marianne (Romy Schneider) in the hills over St Tropez. When Marianne’s ex shows up with his 18-year-old daughter, Penelope (Jane Birkin), in tow, cracks in their assumed air of sexual libertinism start to show. Deray’s film is never knowingly overdressed, full of supple, sinuous camerawork and turning on the curdled chemistry of Delon and Schneider, a real-life couple who split a few years before. It was later adapted as A Bigger Splash by very horny boy Luca Guadagnino – more on that later.
Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)
In Lynne Ramsay’s classic coming-of-ager, Scottish shop worker Morvern (Samantha Morton) wakes up on Christmas morning to an unusual present: a mixtape made by her boyfriend, who’s just committed suicide on the living room floor. Failing to alert the authorities, she instead opts to chop up the body and pass off his unpublished novel as her own: so far, so bleak. But when Morvern and her mate take off to Spain with the funeral money on a Club 18-30-style holiday, Ramsay’s film explodes into intoxicating life, the pals diving into the hedonistic scene before Morvern enjoys a moment of sexual abandon with a boy staying a few doors down in the hotel. It’s pure liquid cinema from Ramsay, who unlocks an explosive performance from Morton as Morvern, sexy, playful and drunk on her own grief.
An Easy Girl (Rebecca Zlotowski, 2019)
A striking companion piece to Rohmer’s drama, Rebecca Zlotowski’s French Riviera-set sizzler sees the older cousin figure played by Zahia Dehar, a former teenage escort who parlayed a public sex scandal into a career as a model and lingerie designer. Naima, a bored teenager in Cannes with the summer stretching out before her, has her head turned when her glamorous cousin, Sofia (Dehar), arrives on holiday from Paris, ushering her into a parallel world of sex and superyachts. Sofia’s brazen love of bling and uninhibited sexuality ruffles a few feathers, but Zlotowski, like Naima, is seduced by her self-possessed air and ability to get what she wants in a world of materialist excess.
Desert Hearts (Donna Deitch, 1985)
In 1950s Nevada, highly strung English-lit professor Vivian (Helen Shaver) comes to town for a quickie divorce only to fall for a free-spirited sculptor, Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), living openly as a lesbian. Donna Deitch’s cult classic is oft-discussed for an envelope-pushing sex scene between its two leads in a sweaty Reno hotel room. But it also boasts some exhilarating photography of the dust-blown American West and a warmly empathetic, literate screenplay from Natalie Cooper, adapted from Jane Rule’s novel of the same name.
My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)
A breakout role for Emily Blunt, Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War) scored a low-key indie hit with My Summer of Love, the story of schoolgirl Mona (Natalie Press)’s blossoming love affair with upper-crust wild child Tamsin (Blunt). Shot in the rolling hills of west Yorkshire during the hottest summer in 50 years, it’s a darkly humorous sexual awakening building to a ‘gotcha’ finale that still manages to polarise.
Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)
Agnès Varda’s marital drama stars Jean-Claude Drouot as a carpenter who enjoys a bucolic life at home with his country-gal wife (played by Drouot’s own partner, Claire, in her only film role) and two kids, and another life in the city with mistress Émilie. Varda wraps her comely female leads up in images of fecund nature on the one hand, signs and advertising on the other, weaving sly social commentary on consumer culture into her tale of infidelity. The film is rightly remembered for the enigmatic montage at the end, but a sex scene between Jean-Claude and Émilie told in snatched freeze frames of bodily entanglement runs it a close second.
Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2007)
In Joanna Hogg’s subversive drama, married 40-something Anna (Kathryn Worth) raises eyebrows when she visits an old friend, Verena, and her family in Tuscany while leaving her husband at home. While there, she finds herself seeking out the company of the teenagers among the group, especially self-possessed Oakley (a tousled young Tom Hiddleston), who seems to reciprocate her interest. To Verena’s growing annoyance, Anna spends her time smoking pot, careening around the Italian countryside and, in one electric scene after dark, skinny dipping in the pool while the boys cheer her on, only for their bravado to fade as they are forced for the first time to see her as an attractive woman.
Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuaron, 2001)
Alfonso Cuaron’s erotic road trip classic starts with its two young leads masturbating into a swimming pool and ends with them haunted by the possibility that they may – gasp! – really be homosexual (or bisexual, at least). In between, they meet worldly older woman Luisa, whom they take out on the road and try to seduce, before an unexpected threesome tells the boys what’s really up.
Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)
Also lending the boys a helping hand is Zendaya in Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s sweat-glossed tale of sex and sporting rivalry from earlier this year. The Euphoria star plays Tashi Duncan, a tennis champ-turned-coach courted by best friends-maybe-more Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Another Man cover star Mike Faist). This crowd-pleasing drama coasts by on the easy-breezy confidence of an old-school studio picture, with an eye for the faintly salacious that’s all Guadagnino.