With one of the most brutal heatwaves in recent memory pummeling Europe at the moment, it’s easy to hate on summer. The sweaty clothes; the sticky skin; the stifling weather. But, let’s be honest, we all know that it’s worth it in the end—because what other season can ignite such classic feelings of desire and intimacy? It is merely the heat? Slivers of exposed flesh as we walk down the simmering pavements? Or have we been conditioned to believe that it’s really only in summer that we let our guards down enough to experience the full, unleashed passion of love? In order to explore this idea further, we’ve compiled ten of our favourite sensual summer films; the ones that have influenced the way we perceive love, sex, and relationships during the hottest months of the year. From shipwrecked teens to isolated French villas and pristine Jamaican beaches, these are the movies that keep us coming back, year after year, giving in to our own disposable romances — if only for the length of a hot, sweaty summer.
1. My Summer of Love (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2004)
Where better to start than My Summer of Love? Mona (Natalie Press) is from a working class family of petty criminals, and Tamsin (Emily Blunt, in her first movie) is a posh girl who is bored with her upper middle class, boarding school lifestyle. The film chronicles their chance encounter and subsequent awkward, messy, lovely, beautiful, complicated courtship, and is a perfect portrait of the elation and terror of first love.
2. Almost Nothing (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2000)
The whole idea behind a summer fling is that it doesn’t last forever, but few films in recent memory chronicle the utter breakdown of a brief summer relationship than Sebastien Lifshitz’s broody art film, Almost Nothing. The film is told in flashbacks, as 19-year-old Mathieu (Jeremie Elkaim) learns to cope with the torrid romance he shared with Cédric (Stéphane Rideau) a year and a half earlier. The film is as tense and reckless and the boys themselves, and features a beach-bound sex scene that makes Call Me By Your Name look like Moana.
3. The Blue Lagoon (Randal Kleiser, 1980)
A saucy teen classic, The Blue Lagoon is the truly wild tale of two children who get shipwrecked on a desert island, and throughout the years that follow indulge in some seriously hands-on sex education. The film was unceremoniously panned for its unrealistic storylines and stiff acting from Christopher Atkins and a 14-year-old Brooke Shields (whose nude scenes were filmed by an adult stunt double), but its controversial nature made it an instant sleepover staple.
4. Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986)
The original French title of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s kitchen sink drama is 37.2 Le Matin, or the temperature of a pregnant women upon awakening. But it also represents the oppressive heat of the summer that Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Béatrice Dalle) spend in their sleepy beach town, locked in the throes of legitimately one of the most co-dependent messes of a relationship ever committed to celluloid. It doesn’t end well, but the ride will make you look back on your own summer romances with renewed affection.
5. How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Kevin Rodney Sullivan, 1998)
We should all be so lucky to live out the plot of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, the film adaptation of Terry McMillan’s blockbuster ’90s romance novel. Stella (Angela Bassett) is a stockbroker just entering her 40s and questioning her life choices as she raises her son as a single mom. But as luck would have it, a chance vacation to Jamaica throws her in the path of Winston Shakespeare (I mean), a young islander 20 years her junior (played by Taye Diggs in his first film role). As Stella grapples with the responsibility of her life back home and her nascent cougar-dom, she’s forced to make some seriously difficult choices — made easier by palm trees and piña coladas, of course.
6. Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
Yet another Frenchman, François Ozon’s moody films are fraught with tense irony, and while the primary relationship in his 2003 pyschodrama Swimming Pool isn’t a sexual one, it’s the heavy air of illicit conspiration that makes it so enthralling. Crime writer Sarah (Charlotte Rampling: always excellent) has retreated to her publisher’s summer villa to complete her latest novel, only to be unwillingly joined by his rebellious daughter, Julie (Ludivine Saigner). As Julie hooks up with scores of local men, Sarah finds herself both repulsed and fascinated by the younger woman’s sexual exploits —until they turn deadly.
7. The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000)
Remember how stoked everyone was on this movie when it came out? Post-Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio had the world in the palm of his hand, and Danny Boyle cast him rather geniously as a naïve American backpacker traipsing around Thailand, trying to locate a mythical stretch of legendary beach. But really, all the tweens were in the audience to see Leo get it on with Virginie Ledoyen, who played the sexy French traveler Françoise. Fair enough, as the film doesn’t quite hold up (neither did the beach itself, which was so altered during the filming that 20th Century Fox was actually sued by the country of Thailand), even though it does retain its sensual nature.
8. Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)
Nothing screams summer lovin’ like a sexually fraught road trip with your best friend and a random woman with shady ulterior motives. Y Tu Mamá También introduced us to both Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and for that, we should always be appreciative. Bernal and Luna play Julio and Tenoch respectively, two young men whose close friendship is put to the test when they both fall for the mysterious Luisa (Maribel Verdú). The (spoiler) cathartic kiss they share during the film’s climactic threesome is still seared into arthouse screens everywhere.
9. Splash (Ron Howard, 1984)
Long before this year’s Oscar winner The Shape of Water had Sally Hawkins getting jiggy with a humanoid fish creature, Tom Hanks seduced Daryl Hannah in Splash, Ron Howard’s relatively family friendly rom com about an unlucky-in-love human who becomes smitten with the feisty mermaid that saves his life. Perhaps not as steamy as some of the selections on this list (it has a PG rating, after all), Splash is notable for introducing an entire generation of young movie fans to the notion that making out underwater is both extra romantic and logistically fallible.
10. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, 2009)
Before he hit critical gold with Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino directed Tilda Swinton in one of her most brilliant roles, the wide-eyed and oppressed Russian matriarch of an Italian family of textile tycoons, in I Am Love. Swinton’s Emma bides her summer days putzing around her glorious mansion and meddling in the lives of her equally gorgeous children until the arrival of a young chef throws her idyllic life into peril. All of Guadagnino’s usual themes are present — unbridled desire, lush scenery, complex characters — and the final scenes of tragic abandon are some of the director’s finest.