Intermission: Leap Year

Director Michael Rowe was inspired to write Leap Year, which is out this Friday, by a story he was told 'about a conservative woman who'd accepted a sadomasochistic relationship in order to keep her lover from leaving.' Laura (Monica Del Carmen) is a freelance business journalist: her day is made up of ringing editors for work ('30 tips to take advantage of the economic crisis'), carrying the can when things go wrong, eating, cleaning (the fridge), reading (Erich Fromm), wanking. She's also alone: a ring on her hand and picture by her bedside may hint at a man in her life but she pretends to family and one-night stands she has a full time seeing friends, going out and eating well, when she's mooching around in her pyjamas scoffing something from a tin.

Set in Mexico, Leap Year portrays a very different life to that of Y tu mamá también's spoiled brats, rather Laura could be a grown-up daughter of the indigenous couple at the centre of Battle in Heaven. Australian Rowe has lived in Mexico for 16 years and says he has an outsider's perspective on Mexican society, though the Spanish-language film is very much an inside job: other than views from the window, his camera never leaves Laura's flat. This is Rear Window without the repressed sexuality; Laura masturbates watching the next-door couple performing mundane tasks.

Laura misses their intimacy, which she finds in Arturo, a man who takes sly interest in her while dealing out beatings. Their sex progresses in the manner of the couple in Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, through throttling and pissing to knives. Initially submissive, Laura strips ready for sex every time Arturo appears, like Cécilia in L'ennui. Throughout the film Laura crosses off the days of her February calendar; she takes control of the relationship towards the end of this leap-year month - it could be called 29 Days Later.

In the Realm of the Senses: Empire state

ALSO KNOWN AS Ai no korîda, L'empire des sens

DIRECTED BY Nagisa Oshima, 1976

STARRING Eiko Matsuda (Sada Abe), Tatsuya Fuji (Kichizo Ishida)

CERTIFICATION 18

RUN TIME 98 mins approx, Nouveaux Pictures

LANGUAGE Japanese

COVER QUOTE 'The expression of total passion' - The Times

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Four years after hardcore Deep Throat, and two years after the soft-focus Emmanuelle, director Oshima distilled the desperation of sex for this exceptionally explicit arthouse movie. This version is available uncut though, crucially, one scene involving a very young child has been panned and scanned.

As the closing narration explains, Oshima based his film on a true story of a murderous affair which took place in Tokyo in 1936 and saw Sada Abe being treated as something of a folk hero in Japan. The insular complicity portrayed between the two protagonists means the film is not wholeheartedly moving but it is an extraordinary vision of sexual obsession.

THE PLOT Former prostitute Sada works in an inn, where she and another maid spy on the owner, Kichizo Ishida, and his wife having sex. When Sada is maligned as a whore she breaks into a furious row, which has to be broken up by Kichi. Kichi makes a pass at Sada when she is working and the two begin an affair, first in the inn and then visiting neighbouring hostels. At one, the couple stage a wedding celebration.

The couple become notorious with the staff at places where they stay for remaining confined in their rooms, barely eating but drinking and fucking all the time. Sada arouses Kichi's jealousy when she goes to visit a client while Sada herself becomes increasingly possessive of Kichi, threatening to cut off his penis if he ever has sex with his wife again.

The affair becomes more intense as the couple introduce strangulation into their intercourse. Sada strangles Kichi, apparently with his previous understanding, and then cuts off his penis. According to the closing vioceover, she wandered the streets of Tokyo gripping his dismembered member for four days before she was arrested.

THE FILM When Kichi first meets Sada she is wielding a knife. He lewdly implies she should be holding his penis instead and, for much of the rest of the movie, she is grasping one, the other, or both. Famously, a knife is finally applied to his penis, fatally.

In the Realm of the Senses opens with a scene of a homeless drunk being abused by some children. When Sada goes to his aid, he recognises her, claiming he used to visit her as a client. He begs one last encounter, offering to pay, and, momentarily, she takes his penis before being called away. There's an immediate sense of the power sex has over her and, perhaps, her own sexual power, which may have reduced this man to the gutter.

Sada is aware of her own attraction to sex and it is important for her, early in her affair with Kichi, to distinguish it from madness. 'I'm not sick,' she says; she's visited a doctor, showing the level of her concern: she's not a nymphomaniac, or any other tawdry diagnosis that might be applied, but 'hypersensitive'.

There is, also, an early indication of her propensity for violence: when she sees Kichi being shaved by his wife, Sada imagines taking the blade and attacking the woman. The scene which has been optically altered shows her tugging a small boy's penis, an image that would likely be deemed indecent under the Protection of Children Act.

Kichi is initially portrayed as a dissolute, if charming, drunk, prone to giggles and singing. He is fascinated by Sada's youth ('I'm no longer so young - how I envy you') and, as her madness grows, increasingly falls under her spell. He is the first to take her by the throat but the roles change as he says he can't bear to see her suffer. He allows her to throttle him with growing force for the pleasure it gives her (it is unclear if he is afforded any thrill beyond her enjoyment). Alongside some outdoor shots, these later scenes are some of the most beautiful in the movie as they achieve an almost mesmeric quality as she rides him in the throes of her orgasm.

Much of the film concentrates on his penis: it is shown erect, Sada fellates him or, at other times, holds a knife to it. When he wakes one morning, he finds her playing with it. 'Did you hold it all night,' Kichi asks. 'Of course.' 'It's as if he was yours,' he says later. 'He is.' Sada even has him piss inside her though, at another time, Kichi muses this is the only time his penis can rest. When they go home, she leads him by his penis and, of course, it becomes the focus of her threats: 'If I cut him off will you die?' 'Probably.' 'Then I don't want to.'

They do venture out, if only to go home or earn some money, and the outside world is an unwelcome visitor on their frolics. Maids criticise the state of their room - smell is especially important to Sada, while both partners enjoy the feel of each other's skin - encourage them to eat or, at least, to have less sex. They seem particularly shocked by Sada's continual willingness to suck Kichi's cock. At one point Kichi is warned, 'She'll end up killing you.'

By then, they are so wrapped up in their perpetual orgy, this prophecy is accepted as inevitable. Sada seems to achieve one incredible, final, orgasm at his death; in blood, she writes on her lover's body: 'The two of us, forever.'

KEY SCENES Chapter 2, 14:05 Kichi has Sada mount him at his home while she plays a musical instrument to cover for his wife. After sex she sucks his penis while he smokes a cigarette.

Chapter 3, 26:06 Sada and Kichi have sex in front of a group of women musicians. One of the women is deflowered by the others using a dildo carved in the shape of a bird before they all join in.

Chapter 4, 40:36 Kichi rapes the elderly madam of the inn where he and Sada are staying while Sada goes to visit a client, a school principal, to earn some money. She urges the ageing teacher to hit her, first across the face, then pinch her and pull her hair.

Chapter 5, 49:26 Sada 'lays' an egg that Kichi has inserted in her vagina, a surrealist image worthy of Georges Bataille. In his Story of the Eye (1928), protagonist Simone indulges in just such behaviour.

Chapter 7, 1:10:30 Sada urges Kichi to have sex with a 68-year-old woman, who pisses herself at the act's conclusion.

Chapter 8, 1:17:54 Kichi allows Sada to tie a belt around his neck which she tightens as they have sex.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT In the Realm of the Senses was critically acclaimed when it arrived at the 1976 London Film Festival, where it won the critics' prize. To avoid cuts, the film was shown in cinema clubs and was only first submitted to the BBFC in 1989.

The film was passed uncut for cinemas in 1991 - optical tinkering for that one scene notwithstanding - largely due to the wealth of critical opinion that had built up behind it. This would support a defence of artistic merit if any prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act was sought. (A friend who saw it at the time only said it confirmed her antipathy towards eggs.) Video/DVD release was officially achieved in 2000. (Virgin had released an uncertificated version in 1982 but it was withdrawn in 1984 when the Video Recordings Act became law; it demands BBFC approval for any release.)

Oshima went on to make such films as Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), starring musicians David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto alongside director Takeshi Kitano, and Empire of Passion (1978), another eroticised telling of a true murder tale, from 1895, about a peasant woman and her younger lover, who conspire to kill the woman's husband. Afterwards they are pursued by his spirit and overcome with guilt.

KEY QUOTE 'Instead of a knife you should be holding something else' - Kichi

BONUS CURIO (1) To avoid prosecution in Japan while shooting, the film was listed as a French production and undeveloped footage shipped to France for processing and editing.

(2) When Oshima struggled to find anyone to play Sada Abe because of the controversial nature of the material his actress wife, Akiko Koyama, offered to take the role.

Secretary: Assuming the position

DIRECTED BY Steven Shainberg, 2002

STARRING Maggie Gyllenhall (Lee Holloway), James Spader (E Edward Grey)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sexual theme, sex and language

RUN TIME 107 mins approx, Tartan

COVERLINE 'A comedy for everybody's who's been tied up at work'

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Hanky spanky with Jake's sister Maggie, who is reported to be about to star in film Hysteria about the invention of the vibrator.

THE PLOT Lee Holloway is discharged from a psychiatric clinic and enrols in a typing course, where she excels. Her first job interview is with lawyer E Edward Grey; when she arrives his previous secretary is walking out and the office is in disarray. Grey immediately treats Lee as if she's always worked there and she gets the job. There is a connection between them and he soon notices that Lee cuts herself. Lee's father is an alcoholic, her boyfriend, Peter, ineffectual, and her mother sits in her parked car all day waiting to take Lee home again.

After a particularly charged telling off from Grey over her typing mistakes, he calls Lee into his office where he spanks her for the first time. She comes to crave his discipline - he specifies what she can eat at home, she crawls around the office and eats from his hand - but he is frightened by his own needs. He fires her - 'You have to go or I won't stop' - in a scene that mirrors her arrival at his office.

Lee accepts Peter's marriage proposal but, when trying on the wedding dress, leaves Peter's family home and runs to Grey's office. She stages what is portrayed by local media as a hunger strike at his desk; a priest and her father are among those who visit to try and persuade her to come to her senses. Grey finally succumbs after three days and rescues her from her protest; they have sex.

THE FILM All the films I've included here so far feature sexual intercourse but Secretary tackles an area of sexuality, S&M, in a relatively mainstream movie. Mary Gaitskill's short story is the starting-off point for an indie romcom, albeit with a twist, in the hands of director Steven Shainberg.

Lee is reluctant to leave the institution at the film's start, life inside is simple and she misses the structure it affords. It is the day of her sister's wedding, and the mores of smalltown life, which Lee and Mr Grey break, loom large. At the reception, however, Lee is forced to confront her father's alcoholism and it is not long before she breaks out her kit of sharp implements and starts cutting herself (and, even, burning herself on her thigh with a hot metal kettle).

There's an immediate passion between them; Grey doesn't act on it straight away but he does tell Lee to stop cutting herself: 'You're over that now.' He begins to question her about her private life and Lee throws away her kit but when Grey spots her with her fiancé his feelings are expressed in anger: he criticises her typing, the way she dresses, plays with her hair or taps a foot. The aggression leads to the first occasion he calls her into his office and spanks her; they both realise they have crossed a boundary (not for the first time, in his case).

Maggie Gyllenhall's expression throughout the scene is a lesson: there's pain, of course, emotional hurt, disbelief. As the beating becomes harder both are panting with effort and arousal; they're left in a daze at its conclusion and Lee takes Mr Grey's hand momentarily in hers in affirmation. Gyllenhall's performance begins as wonderfully ungainly, she's all legs and no grace, while James Spader overplays the simpering, nervous Grey at first but soon moves to confidence.

Lee embraces their new relationship but Grey is humiliated by it; he exercises relentlessly in an effort to overcome his urges. When they split up, Lee contacts other dominant/submissives but is unsatisfied by their often jokey demands. Sex with Peter is no better: the first time they sleep together she insists it must be in the dark and she keeps her clothes on. 'I didn't hurt you, did I?' Peter asks, when he's come. 'No,' she answers, disappointed.

Where the film itself perhaps disappoints is in its ending: Mr Grey and Lee become part of small town life. Oddly, Lee doesn't go back to work for him but the real cop out is in their sex life: they start having one. On the occasion when Grey beats her bare bottom and wanks over her back in his office, he assures Lee he won't fuck her; 'I'm not into fucking.' The cementing of their relationship, however, arrives when they have intercourse.

KEY SCENES Chapter 6, 46:50 After a moment of indecision, Mr Grey makes Lee bend over his desk, palms flat on the table, a misspelled letter in front of her. He begins to spank her, hard, slowly at first, and then more quickly.

Chapter 8, 1:09:42 Grey again orders Lee to bend over his desk, and this time to pull up her skirt and pull down her tights and pants. He masturbates over her back; Lee then goes to play with herself in the bathroom and makes herself come.

Chapter 11, 1:37:23 Grey bathes a naked Lee and they begin to make love.

FURTHER VIEWING When Edward Grey and his new bride go on honeymoon, one of their acts is tellingly familiar to a scene in Belle de Jour (1967). Lee is tied to a tree and they have sex; in Luis Buñuel's film, Belle (Catherine Deneuve) is famously taken into the woods and beaten while tied to a tree.

KEY QUOTE 'Miss Holloway: good letter' - E Edward Grey

BONUS CURIO Prior to the film's release in Britain, critic Tom Charity suggested to Gyllenhall in an interview in Time Out that her character should have had a shaven pubis. She agreed.

Shortbus: Searching for the Big O in NYC

DIRECTED BY John Cameron Mitchell, 2006

STARRING Sook-Yin Lee (Sofia), Paul Dawson (James), Lindsay Beamish (Severin), PJ DeBoy (Jamie), Raphael Barker (Rob), Peter Stickles (Caleb), Jay Brannan (Ceth), Justin Bond

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong real sex

RUN TIME 90 mins approx, Universal

COVERLINE 'Open your mind. And everything else'

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT As GQ proclaims on the DVD cover, 'The most sexually explicit film to go on general release.' And, if you've ever wondered about those Michael Flatley rumours, this is your chance to see the act of auto-fellation.

THE PLOT A variety of characters living in New York are connected by sex club Shortbus; as the city suffers a series of electrical 'brown outs' they're looking for more sex, happier relationships, or both. Sofia meets couple Jamie and James through her work as a therapist and they introduce her to Shortbus; there she meets dominatrix Severin and the pair agree to talk through their various problems.

After five years together, Jamie and James decide to open up their relationship and they meet Ceth at the club; neighbour Caleb is obsessed with James, whom he follows everywhere and photographs. After Caleb rescues James following a suicide attempt by the latter, all the characters regroup at Shortbus in a black out. A carnival-esque atmosphere breaks out.

THE FILM Shortbus is famed for putting real sex in a relatively mainstream picture - it touts itself as an 'E-XXX-tremely romantic comedy'. Certainly its reputation will have further spread with its availability on DVD. What is remarkable about this film is it's no-nonsense attitude to gay sex. Many of the other films featured in this blog, if they feature gay themes at all, are ambivalent in their attitude to homosexuality, if not downright homophobic. Even the lead character in Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell is antipathetic towards gay men: according to her, they don't look at women, which is not something I've ever heard before.

A little like Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart, the characters in Shortbus are slightly damaged: Jamie can't seem to get over his past as a child actor; his partner James is a bipolar former hustler; Sofia, a sex therapist ('I prefer "couples counsellor"'), has never had an orgasm; her husband Rob behaves like a spoilt child; dominatrix Severin has never had a relationship; lovestruck Caleb is a stalker. The only well-balanced personality here is Justin Bond (of cabaret duo Kiki and Herb), playing himself as the manager of Shortbus; he's the sole likeable character among much therapy-speak and self-centred obsessionalism.

The film does sometimes feel a little close to it workshop roots: a game of truth or dare is a banal way to have characters reveal something of themselves. There are plenty of nice touches, though, not least the lovely animation of New York (by John Bair) that links the scenes, and the soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, which also features Scott Matthew, Anita O'Day and Animal Collective.

It soon becomes clear depressive James is preparing the way for suicide: he is opening up his five-year relationship with Jamie to secure a new partner for his boyfriend, as well as making a videotape of memories for Jamie. Resolution for Sofia, who has only ever slept with her husband, seems more difficult to pin down. Again like in A Hole in My Heart, Sofia tries vigorously to make herself come with a vibrator on the bathroom floor but is distracted by her husband, who is wanking to the internet next door. Attracted throughout by a couple at the club credited as 'beautiful couple' (they really are), Sofia is finally shown with them while Rob looks on.

There are big themes here: an elderly man who says he is a former mayor of the city consoles himself that he did all he could to contain the AIDS crisis, and one of the first shots of New York is of Ground Zero. Shortbus works best as a post-9/11 parable of a city powered by sexual energy. It also says, you may want or need to be in a relationship, it may just not be the right one.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 3:25 The central characters are introduced, having sex: Sofia and Rob are banging away on a piano; dominatrix Severin is flogging a preppie client, and James is sucking himself off on video.

Chapter 5, 35:00 Jamie, James and Ceth have sex together. When Ceth calls for a bit more noise, the trio breaks into the Star-Spangled Banner.

Chapter 10, 1:19:51 A counterpoint to the opening scene, where the realigned couples have sex, including Caleb and James, and Sofia on her own on a fantasy, lamp-lit shoreline.

FURTHER VIEWING The film James makes for Jamie in Shortbus feels and looks very similar to Jonathan Caouette's remarkable 2003 documentary Tarnation, which Mitchell executive produced. Caouette has assembled almost 20 years of home video footage, including Super-8 and even answering machine messages, chronicling his mother's depression and its effect on him. Their stories are shocking but the resulting film is very beautiful.

KEY QUOTE 'Voyeurism is participation' - Maitre d' at Shortbus

Ma mère: Keeping it in the family

DIRECTED BY Christophe Honoré, 2004

STARRING Isabelle Huppert (Hélène), Louis Garrel (Pierre), Emma de Caunes (Hansi), Joanna Preiss (Réa)
CLASSIFICATION 18: Contains strong sex and incest theme
RUN TIME 110 mins, Revolver
LANGUAGE French

COVERLINE 'There are no boundaries to desire.'

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT Incest is best? Starring one of the world's best current actors, Isabelle Huppert.

THE PLOT When Pierre and his mother Hélène are left in a Spanish island holiday villa after his father dies in a car accident, Pierre's hatred for the latter and adoration for her is soon tempered. 'You must admit that I'm worse than him: I'm a bitch, I'm a slut,' Hélène tells Pierre, as she encourages him to recognise her true, sexual, nature. Initially she entrusts him to the care of her friend Réa, who promises him their first kiss will be on his arse; when a night on the town goes too far, Hélène and Réa leave.

Now Pierre is left with the younger Hansi, who loves him, but their relatively routine courtship also reaches a pitch when the duo beat her friend Loulou badly, and Hansi reveals her previous relationship with Hélène. When Hélène returns to the island, Pierre agrees to sleep with her; she cuts herself so badly that she dies. In the funeral parlour, Pierre is caught wanking beside her dead body.

THE FILM I went to see this with Italian actress ex and she hated it; she barely spoke to me for the rest of the evening. I tried to explain it away saying it was so tawdry that it wasn't worth worrying about, but it really upset her. I hated it, too; though it does bear further scrutiny there is a problem at its core: based on a posthumous novel by Georges Bataille, how do you adapt the notorious surrealist's work for the screen nowadays? Rather like the Marquis de Sade, any faithful rendering would be unscreenable, such is the power of the written word and the imagination. Better, I would suggest, to work in his provocative spirit (something like Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell or much of Lars von Trier's work springs to mind).

If you're determined to proceed, there's the problem of updating his themes. Perhaps, for my Italian girlfriend, the blasphemous scenes with which Bataille peppers his work bore some real feeling but they're inevitably less provocative to the rest of us. After his father's death, Pierre creates a paper cross and kneels before it; it's a parody of prayer. The viewer knows Pierre hated his father, but we're unsure whether he next begins to laugh or cry, or both; and maybe it's not even for his father, but the absurdity of the situation. (Despite his literary reputation and artistic influence, Bataille has only been adapted for cinema a handful of times.)

Nevertheless, Pierre does slump into a real grief, which his mother attempts to lift him from in unorthodox manner. At first she flirts with her son: 'I'd be proud to have you on my arm,' she tells him. 'People would take you for my lover.' (Hélène soons gets herself into a fury that she is too old for him.) In the form of this sort of nonsense, pseudo-porn she then attempts to lead him down a path to sexual liberation.

Pierre deliberately walks to a local nudist beach naked; given the key to his father's study, he wanks urgently over the porn he finds there; after an unfettered night he comes home to throw out the housekeeper and her husband who care deeply for him. It is a deliberately cruel act performed without feeling or ceremony.

Hélène decides to introduce Pierre to Réa, the 'wildest girl' she knows: 'She'll educate you.' When Pierre thinks Réa is coming onto him, she leaves; the rest of his night is a descent into a hell of drunken tourists, filmed in a documentary-like manner (Ma mère was filmed on Gran Canaria, near Sex and Lucía's Formentera).

Pierre's relationship with the apparently wholesome Hansi - Emma de Caunes looks like she's stepped fresh from an Australian daytime soap - is initially mundane; if anything, it's too bourgeois. She gazes happily as he befriends a young child on the beach but Pierre's letters to his mother reveal he's worried the couple are not 'perverse enough', he's letting Hélene down. (During the orgy with Pierre's mother and Réa, Hansi reads Don DeLillo, of all things.)

Hansi says she's prepared to do anything for for Pierre; in the evening she whips her friend Loulou half to death, something she admits she used to do with Hélène, in front of other men. Hélène is jealous she is being supplanted in her son's affections and returns to the island. In an alternate ending included on the DVD, Hélène's death is described by the police as a suicide; it's not the first time Isabelle Huppert plays a character who cuts herself, as she does in Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher (2001).

With its Spanish holiday-island setting, the nudists, Pierre's alienation and irreconcilable sex, Ma mère is reminiscent of professional French provocateur Michel Houellebecq's Lanzarote novella. One of Houellebecq's protagonists, a holidaying Belgian policeman, joins a cult on the island; Pierre, too, acts as if he is replacing one religion with another.

Christophe Honoré went on to direct musical film Les chansons d'amour (2007), so it's surprising how sparse Ma mère's soundtrack is. Barber's Agnus Dei accompanies many shots of the island's dunes; there is Cyndi Lauper covering Edith Piaf, oddly, (Hymn to Love) and, finally, there's the Turtles' Happy Together. Pierre is slumped beside his mother's casket, fist working frenetically in his lap as it plays. You won't know whether to laugh or cry.

KEY SCENES Chapter 6, 44:14 After deserting him on a night out in town, Hélène and Réa find Pierre passed out in a shopping arcade. Hélène decides to strip him while Réa imparts the promised kiss on his arse. She takes her top off and mounts him on the pavement, laughing at a passerby.
Chapter 7, 52:17 Waking up back at the house with another couple they have brought back, which includes Hansi, Pierre starts to have sex with Réa while kissing his mother's body.
Chapter 9, 1:11:50 Hansi and Pierre have sex in her room. Though naked, she is still wearing her riding boots, which she calls Loulou in to remove.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT Garrel, who spends much of this film naked, acting in a hang-dog and whiney manner, is something of a muse for Honoré. This was their first film together, but they've since gone on to make others, including Dans Paris (2006) and Making Plans for Lena (2010). In Les chansons d'amour, Garrel plays a character involved with Ludivine Sagnier and Clotilde Hesme. In bed together, the three read books about other ménages à trois, including Adam Thirlwell's racy and very funny Politics. The film is a brave attempt to revive the musical; the tunes aren't bad and Honoré pulls off the transitions into song deftly, it's the bits in between that aren't great, unfortunately. Dans Paris, on the other hand, is almost entirely successful, and also stars the feted Romain Duris.

KEY QUOTE 'Do you know your mother is nuts?' - Hélène