The FIPRESCI jury of Tromsø International film festival 2025 watched ten films. In some of them, sex was a topic, or at least “mentioned”. The variations in how the films present and deal with sex are interesting.
Sex certainly is a topic that people who take an interest in films, or working within the film community, discuss from time to time – maybe even quite often. In the last few years, partly because of the #MeToo-wave, the discussion has changed. Talking about sex in our time is often also a conversation about power, and even more recently the question on consent is frequently discussed.
One could think that filmmakers would fear to go into this topic, because of its tension. But, when we investigate several of the films in the aforementioned selection, we can see the screenwriters and directors have had the courage to deal with the questions of sex, power, dominance, submission and consent. I find this refreshing, and even somewhat brave. We need artforms such as film to dive into questions like this, in the language of art.
I have picked four of the films in the selection chosen for the FIPRESCI jury to discuss this. They are Babygirl by Halina Reijn (USA), The Assessment by Fleur Fortune (Germany), Love by Dag Johan Haugerud (Norway) and Panopticon by George Sikharulidze (Georgia). The first two are female directors, the last two are male.
Since I choose to go into very concrete scenes in these films, my article clearly contains spoilers. This is necessary to discuss my topic.
The most obvious scenes about sex and power are in Babygirl. The female business leader (Nicole Kidman), in her fifties, seems to be in full control of her life. But when a younger male intern (Harris Dickinson) starts to work at the company and she is appointed as his mentor, she is about to experience something she had not dreamed would happen. They begin a sexual relationship. But he is only interested if she is willing to do whatever he wishes. Much to her own surprise she joins the “game”. The powerful and controlled woman lets herself be sexually used and humiliated by the younger man. She seems to both love and hate giving away control over the situation and over her own body.
In The Assessment a couple (Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel) in a future society must apply to the authorities to be allowed to have a child. The couple are visited by a female assessor (Alicia Vikander) who will check if they are fit for parenting. They must agree to attend to everything she does or demands. The assessor partly acts as though she is a child, to test their reactions to bad behavior. One night she makes a sexual approach towards the man. He does not want to engage in it but he lets her take control over him because he is afraid they will fail the assessment if he rejects her. Simultaneously he is caught in a game he does not fully understand. Is the assessor behaving as a child in the situation, or as an adult woman, as an assessor – or maybe solely as a woman? Regardless, the man is under the total sexual control of a younger woman.
In both Babygirl and The Assessment, the main character experiences a situation many people would call a rape. Others would call it a sexual game of dominance and submission.
A very different situation happens in Love. A doctor in her fifties (Andrea Bræin Hovig) seems to be in control in her life. One day a work colleague (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) tells her about cruising, where gay men pick up other men on a passenger ferry from Oslo to a nearby peninsula for casual sex. He tells her that he frequently does this himself. The doctor decides to try herself, and one night she catches the attention of a somewhat younger man (Morten Svartveit). She actively engages in a very short conversation where they after seconds decide to have sex at the harbor in the dark as soon as the ferry trip ends. Her female friend (Marte Engebrigtsen) is in shock when she later is told about what has happened. Even the man the doctor has had sex with ends up having problems with her calmness, as he, we learn, is in doubt about his own sexual behaviour because he is married to a woman he claims to love. But the doctor is totally relaxed about what she has done and experienced. Through the whole situation she seems to be in total control, even if she has crossed a border in her own life.
For me, the most interesting sexually loaded scene is from Panopticon. Here, a young man (Data Chachua) is clearly interested in sexuality. He does not seem to be experienced. Relatively late in the film he is visiting a friend´s home. The friend is not there, only the mother (Maia Gelovani). They start talking, and the conversation develops into a closeness where they sit side by side on the sofa, looking at pictures. She asks him to dance, and we sense an erotic mood. When he, in the middle of the dance, kisses her, she withdraws from the situation. I find it interesting to watch how they both contribute to building up the eroticism of the situation. The adult woman is apparently the most active, until she decides that the game has gone too far. None of the two ask for any consent. It is as if such a question does not fit in the emerging situation.
In real life, the question of sex and consent is difficult. On one hand, it should be very clear that no one by any means should be forced to have sex if they don’t want it. On the other hand, the complicated game of flirting and creating a sexually loaded situation may also lack clarity.
Against this background, I find it refreshing that these films offer scenes we can bring with us and learn from. They do not teach us anything in a pedagogical manner. They merely show us how sex and power may be played out in close connection to each other in different ways. Sometimes the connection is clear, sometimes very unclear.
We also note that all the female characters in these films are actively taking part in the sex. The protagonist of Babygirl is partly drawn into the situation against her will, but eventually she takes an active part. One of the main lessons of the last few years is how female experiences still are understated in the world of films. These four movies tell us something about how filmmakers of today deal with this topic.
At its best, films give us stories we can relate to, or refuse to relate to, in our reflections about ourselves. A film that seeks to teach us a moral, may be dull. But a film that shows us what people do, and might do, in certain situations, may be both exciting and interesting. At its best, such a film can give us an artistic experience and, in addition, material for our own reflections and our reflections together with others.
©FIPRESCI 2025