Talking about the difference between porn and eroticism is a debate as old as it is confusing. In fact, not even on Onlyfans are they clarified. For many, it is a simple matter of explicitness, that it is seen more or less.
For others, it is a matter of taste, of context. We choose this second meaning. Porn is about sex, the animal act, eroticism about what surrounds it. What is seen or not is the least of it. Beyond having two or more people having sex, the important thing about eroticism is the path to it, the situation.
Eroticism can be as much a close-up penetration as a leg in a stocking, as a lip that is bitten, as an eye that rolls. Porn is based on the body, its attractiveness, its carnality, eroticism uses them only to tell something that is based on much more, on the situation, on the relationship, on discovering.
The empire of the senses (1976)
The protagonist falls in love with an ex-prostitute in a story bathed in obsessions and irrepressible impulses. She happens to be his servant to bring more than just tea. You can always buy a ‘bell’ for your nightstand, we leave it there. Banned in the West on its release and a real scandal in its time, this film by the great Nagisha Oshima is a masterpiece of new Japanese cinema from the sixties. In addition, it is based on a true story that happened in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, when you get to the end and know that it is a true story, perhaps the eroticism will be taken away from you.
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Maria Schneider denounced that the famous matter of the butter in the final violation was an addition that Brando and Bertolucci did not agree with her. However, from there to what many have misunderstood, that what we see on the screen is a real violation, there is a world.
A man’s worst nightmare come true, your fiancée is sleeping with your father. Jeremy Irons is a respectable and mature member of parliament who is infatuated with the seductive and mysterious fiancée of his son, a young Juliette Binoche. Louis Malle composes here a sick portrait of passion and betrayal with more losers than winners.
Theo and Hugo, Paris 5:59 (2015)
We admit that most of this list is intended for an audience where there is a straight male in the mix. It is worth this example and the following that there are also great bets based on homosexual eroticism to see, whoever you are and whoever you like. Here we will follow the two protagonists in their harrowing love story after an accident in the dark room where the film begins.
The Stranger by the Lake (2013)
Film with a lot of explicit sex developed around a lake where sex with strangers or cruising is common . The problem is that, between orgasm and orgasm, the protagonist lives a whole plot like Rear Window with the boy she likes. Which, at least for a large part of the film, won’t prevent him from enjoying the morbidity, until suspicions surpass excitement, of course.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)
This adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel has better versions like the 1946 one, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield or Luchino Visconti’s debut, Obsession. However, none of them have Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson rubbing their bodies together in the kitchen like someone rolling out a pizza. So it’s clear which one we were going to stay with. The fact that the sex between them was real is an urban legend, but if you want to think about it that way, we won’t be the ones to tell you otherwise.