Angela Mollard: There’s more to pleasure than a speedy, sweaty bonk

The film world is getting real about sex — augmenting intercourse with outercourse, treating consent as sexy, letting playfulness be hot, and allowing women over 50 to enjoy themselves. And not before time, writes Angela Mollard.

If you were a young woman having sex at the end of the last century you’d almost certainly have thought there was something wrong with you.

It seemed every woman in a movie moaned with pleasure when a man jumped on top of her or orgasmed violently when he pushed her up against a wall.

Even Samantha from Sex and the City — fabulous for her fin de siècle libido — did little to advance the notion that when it comes to sex, intercourse is the goal.

Sure, it was sexy. A turn-on even. But a generation of women were left wondering how these movie heroines played by Demi Moore, Sharon Stone and Kim Basinger climaxed so easily without even a hint of clitoral stimulation.

Meg Ryan memorably tried to make the point that perhaps not every orgasm was genuine, but it would be another 30 years before television and filmmakers woke up to the fact that female pleasure is generally predicated on more than a sweaty stabby bonk.

Samantha and Smith in bed in Sex and the City.

Fortunately, they now have their finger on more than just the pulse. Because if streaming services have transformed the way we consume screen offerings, then intimacy co-ordinators have revolutionised the portrayal of women and sex.

Intercourse is finally being augmented with “outercourse” — basically, non-penetrative pleasure and exploration that is far more adventurous than cursory foreplay.

What’s more, consent is sexy, playfulness is hot, it’s OK to be nervous and women over 50 are allowed to enjoy themselves.

In the last couple of years it seems a memo has gone around making the point that women might need a little more than a kiss, a climb-on and a flickering candle to climax.

Meg Ryan make the fake orgasm famous. Picture: AFP

Whereas you previously had to dig out a David Lynch film to see anything sexually groundbreaking, scenes in Bridgerton, Normal People, Outlander, Fleabag and Sex Education indicate that Hollywood has finally discovered the clitoris.

Indeed, when Jennifer Coolidge leaned back on a hotel bed in season two of The White Lotus middle-aged women the world over enjoyed the taste of recognition.

But it’s not just oral sex which is rearing its sensual head in this new sexual revolution. Close-ups of women’s faces showing more than the usual eyes closed/parted lips cliché reveal the nuances of desire while confidence, cheekiness and a reimagining of seduction broaden the intimacy landscape beyond the confected smouldering and sighing.

Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Picture: Getty Images

Phoebe Dyvenor’s Daphne is not so much “deflowered” in Bridgerton as awakened by a partner focused entirely on her pleasure.

“Do you like this? Tell me what you want?” may not have featured in scripts of old but they do now.

While Bojana Novakovic stars on the billboards for Binge’s wonderful Love Me, it’s Heather Mitchell as Anita who playfully guides shy widower Glen, played by Hugo Weaving, to a new understanding of domestic intimacy.

Meditation, role play and nude drawing classes form the backdrop to this later-life relationship with intimacy co-ordinator Amy Cater — backed by a female writer and director — crafting a love affair both charming and attainable.

Daphne in Bridgerton enjoyed more of a sexual awakening than a traditional “deflowering”. Picture: Netflix

Mitchell has commended the approach: “It takes all the pressure off of everything being about sex and makes it all about human relationships and intimacy.”

The fact is we all win if the diversity and inclusion that now underpins casting and plot lines was to extend to the bedroom.

Same sex couplings have galloped ahead with tender and thoughtful portrayals of both sex and love but it’s only recently that filmmakers have recognised the shortcomings (literally) in their missionary-position storytelling.

If we were to roll the clock back to 1989 and Meg Ryan’s hilarious fake orgasm portrayal in When Harry Met Sally, how much more revealing it might have been if Billy Crystal’s stunned Harry had asked a single question: Why?

Jennifer Coolidge in the White Lotus Season 2.

Because the truth is only 35 per cent of heterosexual women always or usually orgasm during vaginal sex alone. Rather, a combination of deep kissing, genital stimulation and oral sex have been identified by researcher Emily Lloyd as the “golden trio” that increases the likelihood of women orgasming with a partner.

According to Lloyd, an academic who authored The Case of the Female Orgasm, women have not just been neglected on screen, they’ve been grievously misrepresented. As she points out, instant climaxes produced by unassisted intercourse have led to unrealistic expectations.

“That’s just not how women have an orgasm,” she said, pointing out that it was even more alarming for the 15 per cent of women who have never had an orgasm.

Thank goodness then for Emma Thompson’s Nancy in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande who hires a male escort to help her learn to climax and Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood’s character realising she doesn’t know what she wants sexually as “nobody ever asked me”.

Heather Mitchell and Hugo Weaving in Love Me. Picture: Sarah Enticknap

Following the scene where she goes on to touch herself and find out, the actress was bombarded by messages from fans thanking her for educating and liberating them.

As always, we can’t be what we can’t see.

How lucky then, that a new generation is witnessing intimacy not as a redacted romp bearing little relation to truth but as a kaleidoscopic endeavour promising satisfaction for all.

Emma Thompson’s character hired a male escort in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande.

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