For The Lusty Month of May, we're looking at a few sex scenes. Here's Nathaniel...
They like to say that people come into your lives for a reason. Also true of movies. When I saw Priest (1994) in its American release in 1995, I was just out of the closet but still very much struggling with having been a strict Mormon for then roughly 100% of my life. The movie is about a gay Priest (Linus Roache) who struggles with his vows .... and not just the sexual ones. It hit me in a seismic way. This had never happened to me before or since but I started crying at the end and actually couldn't stop until after the credits had ended.
Where you are in life can dictate a lot about how you receive a movie. But this series is about sex scenes so let's narrow our focus. Today Priest's sex scene, which I had liked (okay, obsessed over - shut up) back then plays super tame. Why did it shock me then? I have the answer in 2015 watching it again...
We aren't very far into the movie when Father Pilkington (the brilliant Linus Roache who Hollywood totally missed the boat on back then as a leading man) takes off his collar, replaces with a dark jacket, and is instantly transformed into a hot piece. We hear bad generic dance music from the gay bar as he arrives and before the song is over, 1 minute and 10 seconds later in fact, he's already naked in bed with a trick named Graham played by Robert Carlyle. (Carlyle was then starting a run that would make him an enduring cinema and TV fixture with Trainspotting and The Full Monty coming right up. Today he's on Once Upon a Time but let's not think about that.)
All it took was TWO glances to kick start this sex adventure ??? I didn't know how this worked back then and never learned or was disappointed to realize (either/or) that life was not like this -- or at least it never was for me as a single person (if you experienced this instant ease with sex, shut up. Stop bragging) -- but it's the movies so hookups and romances have to happen quickly. You've only got 98 minutes, so get yer kit off.
I digress. Seeing Priest again is a revelation. The reason the sex scene then felt so radical is simply this: It's filmed EXACTLY like the most generic of straight sex scenes. As gay scenes, you know, weren't. And at least still aren't with much consistency.
Here's proof:
There is the suggestion that both parties have gotten naked without much in the way of actual nudity...
There is the loving close up of a nipple kiss to kick things off...
The move to the horizontal (if it doesn't happen before the nipple licking)...
A neck arching back in ecstacy, often preceded by someone slipping out of frame (as is the case here) to do unspeakably naughty things to private parts...
A head against the sheets or pillow...
And that adorable/annoying/ubiquitous cliché of cutaways to hands grasping each other more and more tightly as the scene progresses to denote things like *thrusting has begun* and *nearing orgasm* without actually showing or verbalizing those things.
All of which are the exact same beats, camera angles, and goings ons you see in most straight sex scenes and in the same order.
And then the post-coital shot. These are nearly always more fun than actual coitus in movies because there's more opportunities for variety, humor, storytelling, great line readings, and character beats.
Are you a Catholic?
It takes one to know one and Graham has both gaydar and Catholic-intuition. But Catholics don't hold the monopoly on sexual confusion or religious guilt, much as they like to talk about it, and Priest is universal. At the very least it was resonating all over the place in Salt Lake City that day in 1995.
*I understand that the UK version of Priest is some 7 minutes or so longer than the US version. If that 7 minutes is Graham and Pilkington in bed, please disregard everything you just read and send me the footage.
** While writing this article I accidentally clicked over to Priest (2011) and was forced to fantasize about Paul Bettany having sex with all the male vampires throughout time before he killed them. What? I had no choice!