My favorite mainstream sex scene is the second sex scene from “Cabin Fever.”
It’s pretty dry in terms of nudity; it offers little more then some fleeting sideboob. It’s also pretty brief as sex scenes go. Yet it is nonetheless a striking piece of erotica.
The scene’s strength lies in it’s tone, subtle details, but most of all, in it’s purity of concept. It’s sex and only sex; with any suggestion of romance being deliberately averted.
The tryst occurs in the midst of a deeply upsetting crisis. Marcy, tired of sitting around moping, decides that she’d much rather enjoy herself with a good fuck. Her platonic friend, Paul, being the only man around for miles, is aggressively recruited to help her out with this.
Once she’s made up her mind, her commitment to the act is flawless. If you want a sex act to be “just sex”, it follows that you need the participants to be purely sexual beings. That is precisely what Marcy becomes for those fleeting few minutes (or few seconds, in terms of screen time). She sheds not only her clothes, but also her emotional depth, vulnerability and worldly intelligence; becoming as naked and as brutally straightforward as an animal in heat. For those few minutes, the entirety of this woman’s character can be summed up in just four words: ‘she wants to fuck.’
“You don’t use condoms?” Paul asks her mid-coitus, staggered by the whirlwind pace with which she’s seduced him.
“Don’t worry. I’m healthy,” Marcy dismisses his concern, through breath that is already heavy with excitement. Even the sobering lessons of junior-high sex-ed classes can’t hinder her now. Her common sense has been discarded along with all the other trappings of her identity as a civilized 21st century American. She is truly a force of nature by this point and that makes her an awesome sight to behold.
At the height of the passion, a cutaway to their deathly ill friend adds a flavor of forbidden fruit to Paul and Marcy’s affair.
They shouldn’t be doing this. They should really be tending to the needs of their friend. Yet that context adds an extra layer of spice to the whole scene. Rather than slowing them down any, Paul and Marcy’s passion actually seems to draw strength from the guilty thrill of being a little wicked. After all, would the affair be as exciting if it didn’t come with a cost?
By the time we cut back to our reckless lovers, Paul has been consumed by Marcy’s intensity. His hands are tensed harshly upon the soft flesh of her back. No doubt he is doing whatever he can to brace himself against arriving too soon. Though we only see his forearms at this point, they give away enough body language to reveal that he absolutely needs to finish with her now. He has become an unyielding sexual being, the same as Marcy.
Marcy’s energy is potent as ever. With just a few more moaning thrusts, she reaches her destination. Her head jerks back as her body is electrified by orgasm, sending her long, dark hair tumbling spectacularly down her naked back. It’s a brilliant touch of cinematic flourish, alluding to the sharp, explosive sensation that the character experiences herself.
The icing on the cake is a brief epilogue shot we see soon after, in which we watch Marcy washing her face over a bathroom sink. It’s a simple, but very effective reminder that she would’ve build up a decent head of sweat powering away on Paul like that. Minor attention to detail. Yet it lends an extra degree of realism to the scene, and strongly reinforces the sense of wild passion it conveyed.
As I said at the beginning, if your thing is cheap, gratuitous nudity, then this scene will almost certainly disappoint you.
But if you want a scene that captures sexuality in it’s purest, post potent form, I think you would be hard pressed to do better than Cabin Fever.
