Example

Angels & Insects (1996, US/UK)

Director/co-scripter Philip Haas' controversial film, an adaptation of A. S. Byatt's novella titled Morpho Eugenia, was set in Victorian England with its tale of an entomologist named William Adamson (Mark Rylance) who had returned from the Amazon to reside with his high-class benefactor - a gentrified country minister named Sir Harald Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp) and his large family of seven girls and one son; the story's revelation by the conclusion involved the dark, hidden, and shocking secret of incest between Alabaster's lovely, other-worldly, and enigmatic eldest daughter Eugenia (Patsy Kensit) and her wastrel, spoiled brother Edgar Alabaster (Douglas Henshall); the film was the first to be slapped with an NC-17 rating (later released unrated or R) for one brief scene of male genital nudity (with a semi-erection) when actor Henshall left the bed of a woman and got dressed with his penis remaining semi-stiff.

Bound (1996)

The Wachowski brothers' debut film was this clever thriller and stylishly sexy neo-noir film; it starred Gina Gershon as a butch lesbian and ex-con plumber named Corky who experienced a titillating, Sapphic sexual liaison with a breathy Chicago mobster's bisexual girlfriend named Violet (Jennifer Tilly), while renovating the next-door apartment - they both plotted to abscond $2 million from Violet's boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) while engaging in steamy girl-on-girl scenes. In a sofa seduction scene with her bulging cleavage showing, black lingerie-wearing Violet asked: "Do I make you nervous, Corky?" and then admitted boldly: "I'm trying to seduce you" as she had Corky touch the tattoo on her breast; she then moistened Corky's finger with her mouth and placed it tantalizingly between her legs, as she confessed and proved her true feelings: "You can't believe what you'd see, but you can believe what you feel. I've been thinking about you all day" - and then begged for a kiss ("Please, kiss me") - with their mouths close to each other in full-closeup. Their first fully-nude, explicit consummation of love-making scene in Corky's dimly-lit apartment room was intimately filmed for a mainstream film with two female leads playing lesbians - the camera slowly circled around the bed and viewed their breasts touching as they were engaged together - Violet brought Corky to an orgasm with her hand

Breaking the Waves (1996, UK)

In Lars Von Trier's melodrama, manly oil-rig worker Jan Nyman (Stellan Skarsgard) married sweet-faced, kind-hearted, pious and virginal Scottish wife Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) - they experienced sex for the first time in the missionary position against a restroom wall during their post-marital wedding reception; her newly-wed husband became a paraplegic after a freak accident - she prayed for his quick return (after their honeymoon) to the Scottish coastal village in the early 1970s, and felt guilty and self-blaming - even more so when the paralyzed Jan pleaded with her that the only thing that would give him the will to live would be if she took lovers and then described the sex to him; she slept with other men (including her first adulterous seduction experience with Dr. Richardson (Adrian Rawlins) in which she laid nude on a bed in front of him and pleasantly entreated: "You can touch me now. You can have me now," although he turned away from her) as a way to establish spiritual contact with her husband, as she explained: "I don't make love with them. I make love with Jan. And I save him from dying"; her tragic rape/murder in a sacrificial, self-destructive martyr's death aboard a Russian freighter - where even prostitutes wouldn't go - ended the film; Bess was refused a proper burial as a transgressive cast-out from the community, so a miraculously-healed Jan stole her body's coffin in order to bury her at sea - as a giant pair of heavenly bells mercifully rang over the ocean and the oil rig in the film's cosmic ending, signifying that her soul was entering heaven

The Celluloid Closet (1996)

Crash (1996)

David Cronenberg's coldly-erotic NC-17 rated drama was deliberately controversial and repulsive with slightly depraved, raw scenes exploring fetishism and a unique form of perversion and deviance; the film opened with three sexual couplings illustrating a couple's open-marriage and how they were turned on for their own love-making by casual talk about each others' extra-marital adulterous affairs: the first was of icy-cold blonde Catherine Ballard (Deborah Kara Unger) having sex while bent over a plane wing in a private aircraft hangar - she enjoyed sex while in contact with cold-steel (she was taken from behind by her flight instructor as her naked breast and erect nipple pressed into a steel airplane wing); the next coupling (again from the rear) was between TV commercial producer-director James Ballard (James Spader) and his camera assistant (Alice Poon) in a camera supply room during a film shoot, and the third coupling was between the two unfaithful partners who shared their earlier experiences: wife Catherine (who displayed her bare rear through her skirt) was watched by husband Ballard as she stood on their apartment balcony - and then he entered her from behind as she gripped the balcony rail above the busy highways below; soon after, Ballard had a near-fatal head-on car accident with a car driven by surviving Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) - although her passenger-husband was killed, who freed herself from her seatbelt and tore open her blouse to expose her breast to him as they stared at each other amidst the wreckage; the entire film involved individuals who had survived gruesome automobile crashes and explored their sex-tinged obsession with crashes, automobiles and injuries; Ballard engaged in an extramarital affair with the widowed, surviving victim Helen - their first sexual encounter was in the front seat of his new car (same make and model) in an airport garage as a way to re-establish the 'eroticism' of the crash (and they continued their affair, always with love-making in his car in a public place); the experience caused Ballard to have increased sexual excitement toward his wife and their own rear-entry love-making; Ballard and Helen joined a sexual cult of car crash enthusiasts or victims who would arouse themselves ("It's all very satisfying") by re-enacting (or recreating) famed auto accidents ("the ultimate in authenticity" - the noteworthy car accident of famous Hollywood legend James Dean (Sept 30, 1955)); after purposely being tantalized on the road by reckless driving performed by crash-enthusiast leader Vaughan (Elias Koteas), Catherine became excited with homo-erotic sex-talk about how James might have anal sex with him, and she kept making statements about his bodily fluids ("Vaughan's semen must be very salty"); the fetishistic car-crash group were compelled to watch crash-test videos that functioned as pornography, to attend scenes of real car crashes, to photograph and collect pictures of crash victims, and to be sexually-stimulated by having sex in parked or moving cars (or during a car-wash!); physically-deformed impact victim Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) made love to Ballard in a car while braced or harnessed with a full-body support suit of black plastic and stainless steel - she offered him her vulva-like gash/scar ("neo-sex organ") on the back of one of her thighs after he ripped off her black fish-net stockings; she fondled her breast as he kissed her leg and then made love to it; in the film's startling conclusion, Ballard deliberately rear-ended his wife's sports-car; she was thrown from the car onto the ground next to the wreck, where he caressed her and made love to her from behind, after she regained consciousness and he learned that she was all right (he promised her a more deadly crash the next time): "Maybe the next one, darling. Maybe the next one"; this film was vilified in much the same way as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) was, and the Cannes Film Festival screening had people walking out in disgust, nausea and revulsion

The English Patient (1996, US/UK)

Director/writer Anthony Minghella's film was the winner of nine Academy Awards (including Best Picture) - it was a great romantic war drama about star-crossed lovers in a turbulent, illicit extra-marital love affair in the North African desert pre WWII: the story told (in flashback) about how 'English patient' Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) became involved with married and luminous Katherine "Kay" Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of fellow cartographer Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth); it included various liaisons and love scenes between them, such as when her dress was torn off when Almasy hungrily kissed her, followed by love-making (implied) and an intimate and erotic bath scene (she shampooed his hair before joining him), although he warned her: "When you leave, you should forget me"; they also engaged in a sexual tryst during the Christmas season in 1938 when he told her: "I can still taste you... Swoon, I'll catch you" - she promptly fainted in the heat and then in the film's most sensual scene, they found a private place where, to the background sounds of Silent Night being sung, he slowly undressed her and they were consumed in passion with each other; the adulterous, doomed couple also laid together in bed after another sexual encounter when he described, semi-personally and humorously, about how he fell "under the spell of a mysterious English woman" - he then stroked her bare skin ("I claim this shoulder blade, no wait, I want... I want this place. I love this place. What's it called? This is mine"); the film was also noted for the heartfelt request she gave him in the cave after an airplane crash: "Promise me you'll come back for me"; the film also featured a love affair between the English patient's Canadian nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) and a Sikh bomb expert named Kip (Naveen Andrews)

Foxfire (1996)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Hotline: The Brunch Club (1996) - TV

Jerry Maguire (1996)

Jude (1996, UK)