Greta Gerwig’s favourite cinematic sex scene: “I stand by that”
Greta Gerwig has an expansive love for cinema that can be felt in all of her films, with references to the work of Jacques Demy and Powell and Pressburger in Barbie or George Lucas and Federico Fellini in Lady Bird.
In fact, Gerwig even revealed that she gave watch lists to her cast during pre-production for Barbie, having sleepovers where they would watch The Red Shoes and The Young Girls of Rochefort. Given her eclectic personal taste in film, the director has many opinions about the iconic movie moments that define the cinematic landscape. She expressed discomfort over Breakfast at Tiffany’s and also gave the coveted prize of ‘best sex scene’ to one 1973 horror film.
Don’t Look Now, directed by Nicolas Roeg, stars the late Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as grieving parents struggling to accept their son’s death. During a trip to Venice, the pair encounter two nuns who seem to be passing on messages from the afterlife.
The film is a harrowing portrait of the denial and our desperation for answers in the wake of tragedy, looking for any fragment of certainty that will help us come to terms with unexplainable events. We slowly begin to doubt the sanity of the characters, with John seeing a mysterious figure in a red cloak that follows him around the misty canals of Venice, convinced that he is seeing his son and being connected to the spirit world.
Sutherland and Christie are truly frightening, creating dream-like surrealism that reflects the immediate aftermath of processing terrible news, living in a daze with each other as they try to understand how their lives have irrevocably changed. It has a generally shivery and unsettling mood that follows you like the mist and red-cloaked figure in the story, with a chill that seeps into your bones as you watch this couple desperately try to grasp onto any reality or truth, unable to process the horror of their waking lives.
However, there was one scene that sparked controversy at the time and one that stands out to Gerwig. There is a sex scene between John and Laura about halfway through the film, which is shot handheld and extremely close to their faces, intercut with footage of the couple having dinner. It’s extremely intimate and vulnerable, with the couple retreating to the safety and familiarity of each other during a horrific ordeal, isolated from other people in their pain and finding comfort within each other.
The scene was widely talked about at the time due to some rumours that Sutherland and Christie were actually having sex, which the actors vehemently denied. But, the presumed reality of the scene only speaks to how convincing their performances were, and is the reason why it is Gerwig’s favourite sex scene of all time.
Who knows whether Gerwig would want to recreate something like this in her own work, but given the high praise she has awarded the film and her tendency to pay homage to her favourite movie moments, maybe we’ll see a similar scene in her future work.
