For The Lusty Month of May, we're looking at a sex scene each night. Here's Manuel
Why is it that a drenched body is so lust-inducing on screen and yet so horribly oppressive in real life? This question came to me as I began fearing the humid sweat-filled summer we’re bound to have very soon in New York, while pondering one of my favorite on-screen sex scenes...
If you’ve seen Little Children you know that this laundry machine is a perfect visual euphemism for the illicit lovemaking that the camera is panning towards...
Sarah (Kate Winslet), a smart literate woman who is trapped in the dull role of housewife, has found herself attracted to the Brad (Patrick Wilson), a stay-at-home dad studying up for the bar exam. Alone after a sudden downpour at the pool (their bodies twice drenched!), they finally give in to their mutual attraction and have delicious, sweaty, guilty sex.
Indeed, it is the sweat that has always stayed with me whenever I think of Winslet and Wilson’s steamy scenes. Right after we see their first sexual tryst, we’re given the moment that gives the film its poster (and oh what a poster it is!), with Sarah and Brad enjoying a leisurely chat in her attic. And every time I watch it, all I can focus is a drip of sweat slowly falling off Wilson’s nipple.
It's transfixing.
Sarah has been reading Shakespeare and, right before he storms into the laundry room, he’s seen she’s underlined Sonnet 147 (“My love is a fever”): their affair is combustible indeed, heating them up and making them sweat up a storm. But of course, sweat, much like Shakespeare’s sonnet suggests, may also be indicative of an “uncertain sickly appetite.”
But then, wouldn’t you also choose to indulge in some sweat-inducing, “frantic-mad” desire disease with this hunk of man? Who doesn't need a cold shower when Patrick Wilson is in "Prom King" mode?