Seductive Films to Heat Up Your Summer

Sometimes we need a little inspiration to gather up the courage to heat up our own love lives with a bold new attitude and seductive new moves. Sometimes we need to see just “how” other women (both in history and fiction) have pulled off being both strong and sexy and still managed to snag the leading man – even when society told them (and us) to play it safe, cool it down, play hard to get.

Since this summer’s movies are scarce of such strong sexy women I’ve gone through my

mental film archive of fascinating seductresses to entertain and inspire you. So gather together your girlfriends, and a great big bowl of popcorn, and be prepared for a few steamy nights at home:

First Up – A Classic


Philadelphia Story

While certainly a comedy this witty, sophisticated 1940 classic starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart is an adult love story with completely adult themes about marriage, divorce and redemption – even after we’ve made fools of ourselves.

The film is even more poignant as an inspiration to women when it’s remembered that Katherine Hepburn bought the rights to the play after starring in it on Broadway – during a time when she was literally considered “Box Office Poison” (think we’re mean to celebrities in gossip magazines today?). Hepburn was able to hand pick the cast, the director and the screenwriter who all went on to create one of the greatest romantic comedies ever told.

The plot is remarkably timely. Hepburn plays a society heiress on the eve of her second marriage. Her first husband Grant comes back in the picture to try and shield her from the fact that Stewart’s character is a newspaper reporter, pretending to only be doing a society piece, when in fact he wants to dig up the dirt on the rich and famous. Instead he too falls under Hepburn’s captivating spell. I won’t ruin it by telling more of the plot but I will tell you that the movie was so popular it was remade as High Society starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the ravishing Grace Kelly – but do yourself a favor and see the smarter, sexier Philadelphia Story first.

Now For Something Modern


Better Than Sex

My favorite present day movie about sex, and communication between the sexes, comes from down under. The romantic comedy/drama Better Than Sex is an Australian work starring the cerubic lipped Susie Porter (known to Americans for a small rolse as Hermione Bagwa in Star Wars II and the film Paradise Road) and hottie David Wenham (sadly only known in the U.S. as Faramir from LOTR II & III) and tackles communication between the sexes, and actual sex between the sexes, with far more frankness and honesty than most American films ever even attempt.

No, the film doesn’t show anything real connecting, but it infers it wonderfully – in fact I can’t even think of an American film that has even said the word “clitoris,” or shown an actress caressing her own nipples (and in voice over her rambling worried thoughts) while being gone down on, can you?

I have to agree with Salon.com’s Charles Taylor who assesed the movie thusly:

Better Than Sex could be better than it is, but the writer-director Jonathan Teplitzsky is trying to combine candor with the stylization of romantic comedy -- not a negligible goal. It could be funnier, sharper, more probing, but at its best it is sexy, and that's always something to celebrate.

Yes, it is sexy, and what I find particularly sexy is that the actor’s are far more real than our usual snazzy buff and polished Hollywood types. Porter has small, real breasts, Wenham’s abs aren’t ripped, but both are smart, super sexy and charming actors who take us on the fascinating journey into human sexuality and connection. Best of all Porter’s character calls a lot of the shots, and you’ll be rooting for her in the end when she decides just what the heck is better than sex.

Let’s End with a Real Woman from History


Children of the Century

Let me be upfront and say that this is a movie for those who love to learn about great (if timultuous) romances of the past, costume epics, and of course fans of the quintisential woman-ahead-of-her-time writer George Sand. In otherwords, it’s not a movie a guy is going to sit through with you unless the sight of Juliette Binoche leaves him weak and enrapt for two hours.

It is, however, downright steamy in a way most American epics rarely are, because, well, the French aren’t prudes.

Officially known as the Baroness Dudevant, the writer George Sand took a male pen name in order to be able to have her writing published (just as Mary Ann Evans wrote such masterpieces as Middlemarch under the pen name George Elliot). The film takes place in the 1830’s, early in Sand’s career (she would go on to have many famous affairs, including a very long one with the brilliant Polish composer Chopin) when she has recently left her stuffy husband in the country and taken her two children to Paris, the cultural center of the western world. There she meets the younger, amazingly talented (but often destructive) playwrite/poet Alfred de Musset (she was 27 when they met, he 23) with whom she carries on an on-again-off-again, passionate to almost-the-point-of madness, affair until he nearly dies of an overdose in Venice (they take a trip away for inspiration) and she suffers a long illness.

Binoche is captivating as the bold and brainy Sand, but it’s Benoit Magimel (Binoche’s real life love) who shows this independent woman the joy of sexual chemistry, and just what all the fuss can be about. I doubt there’s an American actor who could play a out and out “dandy” the way Magimel does, yet at the same time coming across as a completely red blooded, lustfilled heterosexual.

Like Better Than Sex, Children of the Century isn’t perfect – but it’s honest journey into the human heart and human libido makes it fascinating and inspirational viewing to kick start both your libido and your courage to get out there and try something new while the summer’s still nice and hot.