BDSM has been grabbing the headlines recently. Want to experience it on the big screen? Rescu. has the top five films to titillate your sense of punishment and domination…
There’s a long-standing myth: when it comes to arousal, men are more visual creatures, while women are more interested in text and words.
While the science behind that one is still to be determined, it’s interesting that the favourite erotic films of women tend to have actual plot-lines: narratives and motivations, making the characters getting into bed fleshed-out creatures rather than empty vehicles.
It’s an interesting light on human sexuality which is still to be fully explored.
If you’ve read 50 Shades Of Grey, gone through all of RESCU’s archive of literary BDSM alternatives and are still hungry for more, with a visual twist, have no fear.
Rescu. has compiled the top 5 most smoking, BDSM-inflected films in modern cinema – and we promise they’ll satisfy.
1. Secretary
This is the classic BDSM movie of our times, and it manages what 50 Shades Of Grey doesn’t – to make it clear that wanting to be punished in the bedroom doesn’t mean you have ‘issues’, and can lead to a loving, healthy, downright charming relationship.
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays vulnerable secretary to James Spader’s dominant boss, and some of the scenes – like watching Gyllenhaal gracefully pick up the mail and the tea while in a full yoke – are now justifiably famous.
It’s also a film which celebrates how much joy both characters get from the infliction of pain – and how much they both participate in it, with Gyllenhaal consciously goading Spader into punishing her.
2. 9 1/2 Weeks
Interestingly starring another male protagonist named Grey, this is from the 80s, when Mickey Rourke was a heart-throb rather than a surprise Oscar contender for The Fighter.
He stars alongside Kim Basinger in a film which explores all sorts of kink, not just BDSM. The film is the story of a spiralling relationship, so it’s not a simple happy-ending package, but it involves scenes with ice cubes, blindfolds and various other mild varieties of out-there bedroom action.
The film itself is relatively terrible, but its steaminess gets it onto most erotic film lists.
3. Blue Velvet
David Lynch’s look into small-town America is one of the American classics of indie cinema, but it’s the Isabella Rosselini character which remains in the minds of BDSM fans.
As a singer who demands that her lover, Kyle McLachlan, learns to dominate her, Rosselini is one of film’s most classic submissives – and the film is very full-frontal, with not much left to the imagination.
The plot is twisted, but the scene in which Rosselini begs McLachlan to hit her as foreplay is a classic.
4. The Night Porter
This highly controversial 1974 film stars Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde, as a couple who originally met in a concentration camp where Rampling was a prisoner and Bogarde a guard.
When they meet again after the war, they begin their BDSM relationship once again, and the result is a psychologically challenging film which touches a lot of nerves.
It also runs back to the same myth of 50 Shades – that only damaged people could have this kind of relationship – but beyond that, the scenes are hot and intriguing at the same time.
5. Belle du Jour
Of course the classic French film had to be on this list.
Catherine Deneueve stars as the bored housewife who has sadomasochistic fantasies and eventually becomes a high-end brothel worker to express them. To that end, she’s tied to trees, pleasured with a mysterious box, asked to play dead, and all sorts of other things – all told with a wry sense of humour.
It’s charming, witty and stylish, and EL James’s heroine wishes she could look as good as Deneuve in her prime.
Lady Friday xx
Taking the pillow talk out of the bedroom, every Friday…
