Pinterest: great for weddings and for blocking sexy, passionate movie scenes. Get your head out of the gutter; we’re talking about Glen Powell’s latest film, Hit Man. If you loved the sensual chemistry between Powell and his co-star Adria Arjona, you have her to thank— it wasn’t in the original script of the movie. She told Cosmopolitan that she created “full mood board of images” that she wanted to have them replicate during the intimate moments. “There was an image of this guy in Italy and his face is on this woman, and the woman’s spilling a little bit of wine. That became our wine scene, of us naked pouring the wine. So we’re seeing these images and sort of going, ‘oh, I find that really beautiful,’” she explained. “There was this one where a woman’s taking off a stocking and then that became the scene where he takes off my sock slowly when I’m in the bed. So all these tiny little moments that you see really come from art. We had photographs, we had sculptures that we were referencing and trying to recreate and make it into a 3D format and give them a heartbeat.” Another reason to watch this movie on the big screen!
Generation Z has spoken, and the hot rodent man is in, and they don’t want him fumigated.
The concept of the hot rodent man might sound foreign to anyone who has ever worn skinny jeans, but it is a term young people use to describe a hipster.
A hot rodent man can also be known as a ‘sexy rat boyfriend’.
Gen Z want the hot rodent men, and they are very vocal about it online.
“I hope someone calls me a rat boyfriend someday,” one shared.
So, what exactly is a hot rodent or a sexy rat? Great question.
It is essentially a lanky man over someone more bulky. It’s someone with sunken eyes and pale skin that scurries around instead of walking with purpose. Essentially, it is the opposite of a finance bro.
Johnny Depp in the nineties is a prime example of a hot rodent. He wasn’t Brad Pitt, he was still gorgeous, but he looked more afraid of vitamin C.
It’s a word to describe someone who is not conventionally handsome, but still hot.
So, while Chris Hemsworth is conventionally perfect with his very white teeth, tanned skin, ripped body, and blonde hair, someone like musician Matty Healy is equally hot, just in a different way.
Matty Healy has been deemed one of the “hot rodent men.” TheImageDirect.com
He is pale, lean, angular and stunning.
Are you getting it?
Generation Z thinks it is pretty clever here, but it’s really just a more outlandish way to describe what Millennials would call a hot hipster or an indie guy.
Online, the generation is declaring that lean men in leather jackets are just as hot as gym bros in football shorts and pretending it is a cultural revelation.
Gen Z want men who look calcium-deficient and like they’ll write you love poems.
They want Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys in the mid-2000s writing to Alexa Chung, saying: “My mouth hasn’t shut up about you since you kissed it”.
Millennials have been there and done that!
Of course, Gen Z think this is a new idea, but anyone who grew up in Australia and watched the rise and fall of the band Short Stack, which featured three pale men with giant hair, will understand that this isn’t a new desire for young people.
Actor Timothee Chalamet has also been call a “rat” in the trend. David Fisher/Shutterstock
The concept has gone so viral that the US version of the Today Show hilariously discussed the idea during a pretty awkward segment.
Former US President George Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush Hagger co-hosted the show and explained it clearly.
“Hot rodent boyfriends or sexy rat men are one in the same. So if someone comes up to you and says ‘hello sexy rat man’ they are also calling you a rodent boyfriend,” she declared.
The show even supplied a list of what makes a man a hot rodent. They have to convey the opposite of toxic masculinity, not be conventionally attractive (which makes them hot), have angular features and show love to their partners publicly but in a weird way.
So basically, the list described Travis Barker licking Kourtney Kardashian in public.
Travis Barker was mentioned in the “Today Show” list for “sexy rats.” SplashNews.com
Ms Bush Hagger was all for it.
“You should want to date Stuart Little,” she advised, which yes, is the fictional mouse that can talk.
Even though being called a rodent or a rat might seem like a slur, everyone can relax, because it isn’t.
Online, some of the hottest young male stars are being declared sexy rats.
Kylie Jenner’s boyfriend, Timothee Chalamet, has been called a “rat” but is also still considered a Gen Z sex symbol.
Similarly, Jeremy Allen White, who just won a Golden Globe for his work on the show TheBear, has also been dubbed a rodent, and it isn’t an insult.
Jeremy Allen White has also been dubbed a “hot rodent man.” GC Images
“Jeremy Allen White does give rodent to me,” someone recently tweeted
Hot rodent men are in and if you’re lucky, one will scurry towards you soon.
Jennifer Aniston has been serving up summer style like there’s no tomorrow. It’s like she knows exactly what I (and possibly we) all need this time of year, as I'm starting to “re-learn” how to dress for the hot, humid weather that I find nearly impossible to dress for. But, Aniston has the perfect solution to my number one dressing woe: a dress.
The actress attended an event for The Morning Show in Los Angeles, and her outfit for said outing is still living rent-free in my head. She opted for a sleek, floral-print sundress that featured ultra-thin straps, a sweetheart neckline, comfy back smocking for a stretchy fit, a wraparound, pleated front, and a high side slit. The brand behind it? Reformation—which celebs have also been wearing nonstop as of late. It’s a Reformation summer, and a floral-print sundress summer, too. Dakota Johnson wore a blooming maxi dress on set of her upcoming movie, which hailed from Reformation, to no surprise, while other A-listers like Andie MacDowell and Jennifer Lopez have worn their version of a floral number.
Aniston’s exact Reformation dress is currently sold out, but it is available in two other colors: a green and a white-and-blue floral print. It’ll cost you $278, but anything from the sustainable fashion label is 100 percent worth it; trust me, I own plenty of pieces from Reformation, and I always fall back on them, which means the cost-per-wear is basically peanuts.
Reformation Kourtney Dress
Reformation
Aniston styled her dress in the coolest way, too—and while no, you don’t have to pair your floral midi with heels like she did, it proves that a simple, summer-y piece can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. The actress went with bright-red heeled sandals that had an ultra-pointy front that looked piercing, literally. But her Reformation dress would have looked just as good with crisp, white sneakers, or a pair of Converse à la Johnson’s latest outfit.
All in all, a floral-print dress is a summer no-brainer. It always feels in season, because flowers! But it’s also easy to wear, easy to style, versatile for all occasions, and breezy and lightweight. It’s the summer 2024 hero piece—and I expect to see plenty more celebs and fashion editors in this staple for months to come.
Shop some must-have floral dresses, below.
Petal & Pup Azelia Floral Tie Strap Midi Dress
Nordstrom
Charles Henry Floral Print Bustier Sleeveless Maxi Dress
Pinterest: great for weddings and for blocking sexy, passionate movie scenes. Get your head out of the gutter; we’re talking about Glen Powell’s latest film, Hit Man. If you loved the sensual chemistry between Powell and his co-star Adria Arjona, you have her to thank— it wasn’t in the original script of the movie. She told Cosmopolitan that she created “full mood board of images” that she wanted to have them replicate during the intimate moments. “There was an image of this guy in Italy and his face is on this woman, and the woman’s spilling a little bit of wine. That became our wine scene, of us naked pouring the wine. So we’re seeing these images and sort of going, ‘oh, I find that really beautiful,’” she explained. “There was this one where a woman’s taking off a stocking and then that became the scene where he takes off my sock slowly when I’m in the bed. So all these tiny little moments that you see really come from art. We had photographs, we had sculptures that we were referencing and trying to recreate and make it into a 3D format and give them a heartbeat.” Another reason to watch this movie on the big screen!
The success of Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s new comedy that has garnered glowing reviews heralding Glen Powell’s emergence as a true movie star, largely boils down to one factor: illicit attraction. It’s the kind that powers fantasies and a good portion of human behavior, whether we’d like to admit it or not.
There’s the pull of Powell’s Gary, a nerdy thirtysomething psychology professor in New Orleans, moonlighting as an undercover impersonator of hired killers, trying on different, more confident identities for size. There’s the longstanding, vicarious thrill of watching ethically dubious protagonists flitter through a well-oiled crime caper. And most especially, there’s the heat between Gary, in disguise as a suave hitman, and Adria Arjona’s Madison, a potential client with whom he has the type of identity-incinerating sex that leads to cocooning in a townhouse and making unwise choices.
Whether or not the chemistry or the moments of sex in Hit Man – still relatively rare for the big screen these days – turns you on is between you and your screen of choice (the film, regrettably, only got a short theatrical release before its move to Netflix this weekend). But the fact that Hit Man is trying to – with panache, taut mind games and movie-star charisma – makes the film a throwback, of sorts, to the sexy, starry Hollywood movies of yore. The film invokes not only Hollywood’s long-running fascination with ruthless hired guns, but also 1940s screwball films, lush 90s romantic comedies and, in Gary’s dumbstruck lust and Madison’s inscrutable motivations, recalls the peak 80s erotic thriller Body Heat. Hit Man knowingly plays with fantasy: what people imagine of a hitman, how two characters are transformed by sex and the type of hot, smooth hyper-competence that can only be fulfilled on screen. (The ruggedly handsome Powell, for what it’s worth, is never convincing as an IT nerd.)
Hit Man is the latest film this year to suggest that Hollywood is trying to bring sexiness, if not always actual sex, back to the big screen, at a time of superhero fatigue, years of relative sexlessness on screen and routine box office woe. Powell is coming off a starring turn opposite Sydney Sweeney in the sleeper hit Anyone But You, the rare R-rated romcom which grossed $219m through word-of mouth and TikTok; this summer, he’ll lead Twisters, a standalone sequel to the 90s disaster flick that, as one Letterboxd reviewer memorably put it, teaches that good storm chasers must want to “fuck the storm”. (“You don’t face your fears. You ride ’em,” says Powell in the trailer, suggesting a faithful adaptation). Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, gives the neo-noir a sapphic twist, two sweaty female bodies entwined in various states of undress.
The mere suggestion of a threesome between tennis players Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) in Luca Guadagnino’s lustful Challengers sent the internet into a tizzy – and theaters to sell throuple ticket discounts – upon release. Anne Hathaway, who became famous during the sunset days of the mid-budget theatrical film, lent her talents to Amazon’s The Idea of You, a premium-grade adaptation of One Direction fan fiction in which a 40-year-old Los Angeles mom has a taboo affair with a fictionalized Harry Styles. A similar premise – famous younger man dating middle-aged mom – is presented with Netflix sheen in A Family Affair, starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman, due later this month.
Judging by the screams at The Idea of You screening I attended, among a slew of other metrics, the culture needs it. Though 2023 marked a relatively good year for sex on screen, from Poor Things to Saltburn to All of Us Strangers and a wave of R-rated raunch comedies, sex in cinema has been on the decline for over a decade, owing to the demise of mid-budget adult films and the predominance of four-quadrant superhero fare. The number of sex scenes in US movies in the 2010s was the lowest in decades, on par with the 1960s, according to a study by the Black List’s Kate Hagen using IMDb data. A study by the Economist, looking at sexual content (excluding assault) in the 250 top-grossing films per year, found a 40% decrease since 2000.
In other words, the bar is low – low enough that most of these newer films coast on the mere suggestion of sex, and the simple prioritization of desire, rather than actual graphic sex scenes. The Fall Guy, Hollywood’s most recent box office disappointment, was a romp of sexy spectacle – pyrotechnics, car chases, elaborate stunts for Ryan Gosling’s stuntman character to win back his lost love (Emily Blunt) – without any actual sex. Challengers arguably contained less actual sex than its marketing material sold, but the film luxuriated in the energy of it. Characters dripped sweat; Guadagnino served up shots of his stars’ bodies in motion to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s club-ready score; and in the film’s climax of long-simmering desire, a windstorm seems to collect every stray paper in suburban New York. The movie does not depict actual fucking, but definitely fucks – a frenetic brew of tension liable to wind you up till 5am.
Amazon’s The Idea of You is similarly powered more by the imagination of illicit sex than its actual depiction. Like Hit Man, The Idea of You also feels like a throwback: a decently made romance with the budget to match (counterfeit 1D tracks included) that treats the whims of celebrity romance fantasy seriously, with a true movie star lead. Hathaway’s improbably named Solene may be impeccably glamorous, but she’s also in her 40s – the age at which Hollywood still notoriously sends women out to pasture. And yet her maturity, her experience, her lack of interest in the spotlight, draws the attention of a much younger star, who whisks her away to penthouse suites, VIP areas and French villas, with some steamy makeouts in lingerie mixed in. The film, directed by Michael Showalter, smartly blends airport-novel breeziness with just enough edge, dispelling the myth of allegedly “post prime” women; a treat of longing stares and passionate kisses, plus a little commentary.
While the attractions in these films may be illicit – unusual and besieged by (often misogynistic) online judgment in The Idea of You, between a “killer” and someone capable of hiring one in Hit Man, complicating a tangle of formal and informal relationships in Challengers – they are not actually explicit or transgressive. These are not the kinks of (nor the moral panic over) the Fifty Shades of Grey films, nor the divisive gratuity and enthusiasm of Emma Stone’s shamelessly sexual Bella Baxter in Poor Things. These unabashedly horny films are aiming for straightforward – and mostly straight – fun, not so much pushing the boundaries as trying to court a large, starved audience to watch. That the small moments of charged intimacy in Challengers – the way Patrick looks at Tashi, the copious shared dust of Art and Patrick’s churros – have become shared audience touchstones and memes seems evidence that doing this level of arousal well – a relatively basic job of movies – is still a revelation.
They may or may not work, in terms of titillation; I found Challengers and The Idea of You more fun, in their unsubtle pleasures and beautiful leads, than gut-twistingly erotic. But just by predicating desire, by aiming for the ineffable and inexplicable feelings of attraction, feels in and of itself something to celebrate. Fluke of timing or not, there is a movie-going public ready to buy in to these depictions of sex, should Hollywood be willing to sell it.
The success of Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s new comedy that has garnered glowing reviews heralding Glen Powell’s emergence as a true movie star, largely boils down to one factor: illicit attraction. It’s the kind that powers fantasies and a good portion of human behavior, whether we’d like to admit it or not.
There’s the pull of Powell’s Gary, a nerdy thirtysomething psychology professor in New Orleans, moonlighting as an undercover impersonator of hired killers, trying on different, more confident identities for size. There’s the longstanding, vicarious thrill of watching ethically dubious protagonists flitter through a well-oiled crime caper. And most especially, there’s the heat between Gary, in disguise as a suave hitman, and Adria Arjona’s Madison, a potential client with whom he has the type of identity-incinerating sex that leads to cocooning in a townhouse and making unwise choices.
Whether or not the chemistry or the moments of sex in Hit Man – still relatively rare for the big screen these days – turns you on is between you and your screen of choice (the film, regrettably, only got a short theatrical release before its move to Netflix this weekend). But the fact that Hit Man is trying to – with panache, taut mind games and movie-star charisma – makes the film a throwback, of sorts, to the sexy, starry Hollywood movies of yore. The film invokes not only Hollywood’s long-running fascination with ruthless hired guns, but also 1940s screwball films, lush 90s romantic comedies and, in Gary’s dumbstruck lust and Madison’s inscrutable motivations, recalls the peak 80s erotic thriller Body Heat. Hit Man knowingly plays with fantasy: what people imagine of a hitman, how two characters are transformed by sex and the type of hot, smooth hyper-competence that can only be fulfilled on screen. (The ruggedly handsome Powell, for what it’s worth, is never convincing as an IT nerd.)
Hit Man is the latest film this year to suggest that Hollywood is trying to bring sexiness, if not always actual sex, back to the big screen, at a time of superhero fatigue, years of relative sexlessness on screen and routine box office woe. Powell is coming off a starring turn opposite Sydney Sweeney in the sleeper hit Anyone But You, the rare R-rated romcom which grossed $219m through word-of mouth and TikTok; this summer, he’ll lead Twisters, a standalone sequel to the 90s disaster flick that, as one Letterboxd reviewer memorably put it, teaches that good storm chasers must want to “fuck the storm”. (“You don’t face your fears. You ride ’em,” says Powell in the trailer, suggesting a faithful adaptation). Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, gives the neo-noir a sapphic twist, two sweaty female bodies entwined in various states of undress.
The mere suggestion of a threesome between tennis players Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) in Luca Guadagnino’s lustful Challengers sent the internet into a tizzy – and theaters to sell throuple ticket discounts – upon release. Anne Hathaway, who became famous during the sunset days of the mid-budget theatrical film, lent her talents to Amazon’s The Idea of You, a premium-grade adaptation of One Direction fan fiction in which a 40-year-old Los Angeles mom has a taboo affair with a fictionalized Harry Styles. A similar premise – famous younger man dating middle-aged mom – is presented with Netflix sheen in A Family Affair, starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman, due later this month.
Judging by the screams at The Idea of You screening I attended, among a slew of other metrics, the culture needs it. Though 2023 marked a relatively good year for sex on screen, from Poor Things to Saltburn to All of Us Strangers and a wave of R-rated raunch comedies, sex in cinema has been on the decline for over a decade, owing to the demise of mid-budget adult films and the predominance of four-quadrant superhero fare. The number of sex scenes in US movies in the 2010s was the lowest in decades, on par with the 1960s, according to a study by the Black List’s Kate Hagen using IMDb data. A study by the Economist, looking at sexual content (excluding assault) in the 250 top-grossing films per year, found a 40% decrease since 2000.
In other words, the bar is low – low enough that most of these newer films coast on the mere suggestion of sex, and the simple prioritization of desire, rather than actual graphic sex scenes. The Fall Guy, Hollywood’s most recent box office disappointment, was a romp of sexy spectacle – pyrotechnics, car chases, elaborate stunts for Ryan Gosling’s stuntman character to win back his lost love (Emily Blunt) – without any actual sex. Challengers arguably contained less actual sex than its marketing material sold, but the film luxuriated in the energy of it. Characters dripped sweat; Guadagnino served up shots of his stars’ bodies in motion to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s club-ready score; and in the film’s climax of long-simmering desire, a windstorm seems to collect every stray paper in suburban New York. The movie does not depict actual fucking, but definitely fucks – a frenetic brew of tension liable to wind you up till 5am.
Amazon’s The Idea of You is similarly powered more by the imagination of illicit sex than its actual depiction. Like Hit Man, The Idea of You also feels like a throwback: a decently made romance with the budget to match (counterfeit 1D tracks included) that treats the whims of celebrity romance fantasy seriously, with a true movie star lead. Hathaway’s improbably named Solene may be impeccably glamorous, but she’s also in her 40s – the age at which Hollywood still notoriously sends women out to pasture. And yet her maturity, her experience, her lack of interest in the spotlight, draws the attention of a much younger star, who whisks her away to penthouse suites, VIP areas and French villas, with some steamy makeouts in lingerie mixed in. The film, directed by Michael Showalter, smartly blends airport-novel breeziness with just enough edge, dispelling the myth of allegedly “post prime” women; a treat of longing stares and passionate kisses, plus a little commentary.
While the attractions in these films may be illicit – unusual and besieged by (often misogynistic) online judgment in The Idea of You, between a “killer” and someone capable of hiring one in Hit Man, complicating a tangle of formal and informal relationships in Challengers – they are not actually explicit or transgressive. These are not the kinks of (nor the moral panic over) the Fifty Shades of Grey films, nor the divisive gratuity and enthusiasm of Emma Stone’s shamelessly sexual Bella Baxter in Poor Things. These unabashedly horny films are aiming for straightforward – and mostly straight – fun, not so much pushing the boundaries as trying to court a large, starved audience to watch. That the small moments of charged intimacy in Challengers – the way Patrick looks at Tashi, the copious shared dust of Art and Patrick’s churros – have become shared audience touchstones and memes seems evidence that doing this level of arousal well – a relatively basic job of movies – is still a revelation.
They may or may not work, in terms of titillation; I found Challengers and The Idea of You more fun, in their unsubtle pleasures and beautiful leads, than gut-twistingly erotic. But just by predicating desire, by aiming for the ineffable and inexplicable feelings of attraction, feels in and of itself something to celebrate. Fluke of timing or not, there is a movie-going public ready to buy in to these depictions of sex, should Hollywood be willing to sell it.
The success of Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s new comedy that has garnered glowing reviews heralding Glen Powell’s emergence as a true movie star, largely boils down to one factor: illicit attraction. It’s the kind that powers fantasies and a good portion of human behavior, whether we’d like to admit it or not.
There’s the pull of Powell’s Gary, a nerdy thirtysomething psychology professor in New Orleans, moonlighting as an undercover impersonator of hired killers, trying on different, more confident identities for size. There’s the longstanding, vicarious thrill of watching ethically dubious protagonists flitter through a well-oiled crime caper. And most especially, there’s the heat between Gary, in disguise as a suave hitman, and Adria Arjona’s Madison, a potential client with whom he has the type of identity-incinerating sex that leads to cocooning in a townhouse and making unwise choices.
Whether or not the chemistry or the moments of sex in Hit Man – still relatively rare for the big screen these days – turns you on is between you and your screen of choice (the film, regrettably, only got a short theatrical release before its move to Netflix this weekend). But the fact that Hit Man is trying to – with panache, taut mind games and movie-star charisma – makes the film a throwback, of sorts, to the sexy, starry Hollywood movies of yore. The film invokes not only Hollywood’s long-running fascination with ruthless hired guns, but also 1940s screwball films, lush 90s romantic comedies and, in Gary’s dumbstruck lust and Madison’s inscrutable motivations, recalls the peak 80s erotic thriller Body Heat. Hit Man knowingly plays with fantasy: what people imagine of a hitman, how two characters are transformed by sex and the type of hot, smooth hyper-competence that can only be fulfilled on screen. (The ruggedly handsome Powell, for what it’s worth, is never convincing as an IT nerd.)
Hit Man is the latest film this year to suggest that Hollywood is trying to bring sexiness, if not always actual sex, back to the big screen, at a time of superhero fatigue, years of relative sexlessness on screen and routine box office woe. Powell is coming off a starring turn opposite Sydney Sweeney in the sleeper hit Anyone But You, the rare R-rated romcom which grossed $219m through word-of mouth and TikTok; this summer, he’ll lead Twisters, a standalone sequel to the 90s disaster flick that, as one Letterboxd reviewer memorably put it, teaches that good storm chasers must want to “fuck the storm”. (“You don’t face your fears. You ride ’em,” says Powell in the trailer, suggesting a faithful adaptation). Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, gives the neo-noir a sapphic twist, two sweaty female bodies entwined in various states of undress.
The mere suggestion of a threesome between tennis players Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) in Luca Guadagnino’s lustful Challengers sent the internet into a tizzy – and theaters to sell throuple ticket discounts – upon release. Anne Hathaway, who became famous during the sunset days of the mid-budget theatrical film, lent her talents to Amazon’s The Idea of You, a premium-grade adaptation of One Direction fan fiction in which a 40-year-old Los Angeles mom has a taboo affair with a fictionalized Harry Styles. A similar premise – famous younger man dating middle-aged mom – is presented with Netflix sheen in A Family Affair, starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman, due later this month.
Judging by the screams at The Idea of You screening I attended, among a slew of other metrics, the culture needs it. Though 2023 marked a relatively good year for sex on screen, from Poor Things to Saltburn to All of Us Strangers and a wave of R-rated raunch comedies, sex in cinema has been on the decline for over a decade, owing to the demise of mid-budget adult films and the predominance of four-quadrant superhero fare. The number of sex scenes in US movies in the 2010s was the lowest in decades, on par with the 1960s, according to a study by the Black List’s Kate Hagen using IMDb data. A study by the Economist, looking at sexual content (excluding assault) in the 250 top-grossing films per year, found a 40% decrease since 2000.
In other words, the bar is low – low enough that most of these newer films coast on the mere suggestion of sex, and the simple prioritization of desire, rather than actual graphic sex scenes. The Fall Guy, Hollywood’s most recent box office disappointment, was a romp of sexy spectacle – pyrotechnics, car chases, elaborate stunts for Ryan Gosling’s stuntman character to win back his lost love (Emily Blunt) – without any actual sex. Challengers arguably contained less actual sex than its marketing material sold, but the film luxuriated in the energy of it. Characters dripped sweat; Guadagnino served up shots of his stars’ bodies in motion to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s club-ready score; and in the film’s climax of long-simmering desire, a windstorm seems to collect every stray paper in suburban New York. The movie does not depict actual fucking, but definitely fucks – a frenetic brew of tension liable to wind you up till 5am.
Amazon’s The Idea of You is similarly powered more by the imagination of illicit sex than its actual depiction. Like Hit Man, The Idea of You also feels like a throwback: a decently made romance with the budget to match (counterfeit 1D tracks included) that treats the whims of celebrity romance fantasy seriously, with a true movie star lead. Hathaway’s improbably named Solene may be impeccably glamorous, but she’s also in her 40s – the age at which Hollywood still notoriously sends women out to pasture. And yet her maturity, her experience, her lack of interest in the spotlight, draws the attention of a much younger star, who whisks her away to penthouse suites, VIP areas and French villas, with some steamy makeouts in lingerie mixed in. The film, directed by Michael Showalter, smartly blends airport-novel breeziness with just enough edge, dispelling the myth of allegedly “post prime” women; a treat of longing stares and passionate kisses, plus a little commentary.
While the attractions in these films may be illicit – unusual and besieged by (often misogynistic) online judgment in The Idea of You, between a “killer” and someone capable of hiring one in Hit Man, complicating a tangle of formal and informal relationships in Challengers – they are not actually explicit or transgressive. These are not the kinks of (nor the moral panic over) the Fifty Shades of Grey films, nor the divisive gratuity and enthusiasm of Emma Stone’s shamelessly sexual Bella Baxter in Poor Things. These unabashedly horny films are aiming for straightforward – and mostly straight – fun, not so much pushing the boundaries as trying to court a large, starved audience to watch. That the small moments of charged intimacy in Challengers – the way Patrick looks at Tashi, the copious shared dust of Art and Patrick’s churros – have become shared audience touchstones and memes seems evidence that doing this level of arousal well – a relatively basic job of movies – is still a revelation.
They may or may not work, in terms of titillation; I found Challengers and The Idea of You more fun, in their unsubtle pleasures and beautiful leads, than gut-twistingly erotic. But just by predicating desire, by aiming for the ineffable and inexplicable feelings of attraction, feels in and of itself something to celebrate. Fluke of timing or not, there is a movie-going public ready to buy in to these depictions of sex, should Hollywood be willing to sell it.
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