Mubi, HBO, Searchlight Pictures
Gay films have come a long way over the years, which also means some pretty sexy scenes have graced our screens. We're happy the world is finally catching on to how amazing we are, but that's beside the point -- a lot of us are here for the sex.
Here's a look at the 30 sexiest gay scenes in film history. Subjectively, of course.
SBS Productions
The 2023 film Passages had some steamy sex in it. The plot revolves around a gay married couple and an affair, and there’s a lot of physical touch. One scene thought responsible for the controversial NC-17 rating was a reconciliation between the two main characters, Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and Martin (Ben Whishaw.)
Mubi
Rotting in the Sun was another 2023 film, and this one brought the shock value when it came to sex, particularly with the amount of it that was unsimulated (meaning it actually happened.) The film itself is always a wild ride, but it’s definitely one to stream if you’re looking for something sexy.
Searchlight Pictures
There was so much buildup to the release of Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers that it would have been heartbreaking if the chemistry between the two leads, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, didn’t work. Fortunately, it very much did, and the sex scene and the film were both well worth the wait.
HBO
We recently did a ranking on all of the sex scenes from LookingLooking, but the one from the movie easily takes the cake (pun intended.) This scene gives us the most sex from the entire series, and we’re totally here for it.
David’s Birthday is a film by Italian filmmaker Marco Filiberti that definitely gives some NSFW scenes. The plot follows David, a handsome model, who returns home to Italy to visit family and becomes the obsession of one of his father’s friends, Matteo.
Killer Films
Kill Your Darlings features Daniel Radcliffe, known for his role in Harry Potter, who appears in one of the most emotional and captivating sex scenes captured on film. Radcliffe himself said the director walked him through step by step, telling him “gay sex, especially for the first time, is really f**king painful.”
Leave the translator on the bedside table. You won’t need it to understand this sensual Argentine drama based on a true story of bank-robbing lovers on the lam. Though protagonists El Nene and Angel are constantly imperiled, they steal a final tender moment during a gunfight, burning up the screen with a desperate grab at love.
Sweat and saliva aren’t essential to sexiness—sometimes it just takes a funny bone. Another cult classic, found its heart in a furtive love affair between two camp counselors, played by Bradley Cooper and Michael Ian Black, in identical tube socks, stolen in a dim shed.
There’s little romance involved when it comes to the encounter that starts Glen and Russell’s isolated two-night stand. It’s raw passion and yearning, straightforward and frank, and that’s what energizes this touching and haunting indie hit about what happens when a casual hook-up turns into something more.
Lust provides the thrust of Zach and Shaun’s long-anticipated night of passion, an explosion of atavistic attraction — pull at the belt; get the fly; untangle the legs — but it’s love that wins the day in this movie about a young man coming to terms with his sexuality. The men can’t resist one another, and we can’t resist hitting rewind.
"It would have to be when Noam (Ohad Knoller) and Ashraf (Yousef Sweid) first have sex in Eytan Fox's The Bubble. The scene's great for two reasons: first, because it dares to show an Israeli Jewish man and a Palestinian man making love, and second because it eschews the spit-and-smile approach to movies like Brokeback Mountain to give viewers a more realistic version of what happens when someone loses his anal cherry—it's a little awkward, a little painful, but also irresistible and tender and ineffably pleasurable. And no, it doesn't hurt that Knoller and Sweid are totally cute, too." —Dale Peck, novelist, 'Sprout'.
From start to finish, this adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel about a dangerously handsome murderer plays like the love child of Pierre et Gilles and Tom of Finland. Fetishes abound (soldiers, sailors, cops, criminals), yet of all the rendezvous and caresses, it’sQuerelleand killer construction worker Gil’s long-anticipated embrace that lingers with viewers longest.
Shortbus stands out for its evocative, at times confrontational portrayal of real-life sex—largely because the actors were actually having sex. But it’s the scene in which actress Sook-Yin Lee’s Sofia Lin, a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, gets to enjoy her first orgy that is this flick’s sexiest. The participants aren’t crude or bacchanal or drugged out; they’re simply uninhibited and having fun.
“I never thought we’d do it without touching.” But they did: Max (Clive Owen) and Horst (Lothaire Bluteau) bring each other to ecstasy without ever making a single move in Bent, about gay men who fall in love in a Nazi concentration camp. The scene in question—where the two stand side by side, never looking at or touching each other while reaching silent climax—leaves the viewer reeling.
"My favorite movie male-on-male love scene is one in which the male couple are separated by a cell wall but brought together by a straw and a shared lungful of smoke. Is this is a bad sign? Jean Genet'sUn Chant D'Amour, his only movie, is set, of course, in a prison. A middle-aged prisoner knocks on his cell wall, frantically trying to attract the attention of his younger neighbor, who is dancing with himself in a dirty vest with a face as tender as it is tough. The old lag lights a cigarette, inserts a straw through a tiny hole, and blows smoke through it into the next cell. After studiously feigning disinterest, the young brute finally kneels at the wall, closed-eyed and open-mouthed, and receives the billowingn white smoke. It's a great, exquisitely poetic representation of the impossibility of romance—and even desire itself. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, I've looked at glory holes from both sides now, from blower and inhaler, from younger and older, and still it's glory holes' illusions I recall." —Mark Simpson, writer, Metrosexy
Confused and traumatized by unconsummated love, Maurice (James Wilby) finally gets some relief when he succumbs to gamekeeper Scudder’s (Rupert Graves) nocturnal advances in this Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s posthumous novel. Though Maurice is initially dismayed when Scudder offers himself up, he comes to his senses and together the men find their happy ending.
Brutal and violent, artist Caravaggio’s doomed affair with street fighter Ranuccio is sexuality at its most unrestrained. The men, played by Nigel Terry and Sean Bean, know perfectly well they can’t come out of their dalliance unscathed—nor do they—but it’s those elements of danger that make this story so combustible.
It’s tenderness that fuels the sexuality in this pick, Van Sant’s beloved tale of a gay narcoleptic street hustler (River Phoenix) who is desperately in love with his best friend, Scott (Keanu Reeves). The realistic portrayal of platonic, symbiotic intimacy sticks with the viewer longer than the image of Phoenix and Reeves cuddling up by a campfire.
"There's an encounter in Taxi zum Klo between director-star Frank Ripploh and his real-life lover, Bernd Broaderup. It was the first sex scene I'd ever seen that combined hotness, narrative necessity, a dom/sub dynamic, and the ineffable sweetness that comes only from a real relationship. It as the seed for Shortbus." — John Cameron Mitchell, filmmaker, Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
A complex tale of acceptance and rejection, this Peruvian film contains a plethora of sex scenes between fisherman Miguel and artist Santiago, who pursue a forbidden relationship that blurs the line between life and death. Of all those moments, it’s their encounter in an oceanside cave that marks the film’s sexiest scene.
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna capture the potent curiosity of two men questioning their sexual allegiances in Cuarón’s skin-filled, Oscar-nominated film. The pinnacle of their ambiguous relationship, a halting, yet charged, drunken kiss, changes them forever.
Two Israeli soldiers are marching through the snow. They wrestle to the ground. One reveals he’s naked beneath his army-issued jumper. The other accepts the implicit invitation and they go at it as a rabbit watches. This scene from the tense Israeli military love story is a pure slice of fantasy, heightened by its forbidden nature.
Glam rock drama Velvet Goldmine is rife with sex, including Ewan McGregor locking lips with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and engaging Christian Bale in an out-of-this-world romp in a moon crater. There’s no one sexiest scene here; just unadulterated exploration and its climactic consequences.
"The last five minutes of Pedro Almodovar'sLaw of Desirewith the unbelievably sweet and sexy, pre-Hollywood Antonio Banderas is one of the reasons I became a film director and big believer in true love." — Eytan Fox, filmmaker,Yossi & JaggerandThe Bubble
Hubert and Antonin seal their supple love in a paint-soaked encounter that’s sexy not just for the skin and kisses but for the rollicking enthusiasm the pair exudes. They’re trying to create an artistic kingdom for themselves, and they seem to be on the right track in French–Canadian director Dolan’s 2009 biographical drama.
Living with terminal cancer, Romain (Melvil Poupaud), a fashion photographer who shoots subjects during orgasm, decides to fill what little time he’s left with as much sex as possible. While Romain and lover Sasha’s impetuous passion alone is reason enough to see this film, the taut narrative about life, death, and sexuality imbues it with existential gravity.
Gay-leaning Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe would appreciate Jarman’s adaptation of his work about King Edward II’s love affair with debaucherous nobleman Piers Gaveston. Controversial for its frank depiction of man-on-man action, this entry drips with sensuality from the get-go; the scene of Edward and Gaveston chatting as young squires cavort behind them is among the movie’s most gripping.
The viewer knows from the get-go there’s no happy ending for the young men at the center of this drama, but that doesn’t detract from Mathieu and Cédric’s many joyful romps together while on holiday at the beach in coastal France. They’re playful and free and very, very nude—an unbeatably sexy, and European, combination.
Race, sexuality, and class provide the backdrop for Omar and Johnny’s attraction, on that explodes at the titular laundrette in a scene as sexy and lustful as it is symbolic and artful. The film is essential viewing, full of unadulterated passion, instinctive longing, and, most importantly, a young, bare-chested Daniel Day-Lewis.
The despair and self-destruction of a doomed relationship saturate this film by Hong Kong–based filmmaker Wong. From the opening scene featuring Ho Po-wing and Lai Yiu-fai reenacting their post-breakup ritual of a roll in the sheets, the viewer is given a wide, grainy view of romance at its most toxic and passion at its most irresistible. The cinematography here adds an extra layer of allure, adding a gritty vintage quality that only heightens the experience.
