5) The Love Witch (2016, dir Anna Biller)

The subject of sex scenes in films is surrounded by evasive pieties: from the male critics who affect to find them “boring” (their noses aren’t their only tumescent part) to female stars whose characters are glimpsed having supposedly uninhibited sex, but wearing a bra because of no-nudity clauses. Anna Biller’s gloriously lush exploitation homage The Love Witch, starring Samantha Robinson and unashamedly in love with empowered sexiness, is almost one long sex scene in itself, though there is one particular moment that stands out when a man is drugged by the witch’s love potion. It is not very explicit, or even protracted, but like the rest of the film is almost unique in that it is unembarrassed about celebrating sexiness, unencumbered by guilt or dramatic doom, and reclaims the sex scene from male-centred eroticism.

4) Team America: World Police (2004, dirs Trey Parker, Matt Stone)

One of the most extraordinary sex scenes of modern cinema takes place between puppets playing heterosexual characters, and the very fact of their being plastic liberates the film-makers to make an explicit sex scene in ways that would be quite impossible with flesh-and-blood humans. The scene itself serves as a brilliant commentary on the choreography of sex scenes, with their dramatically heightened expectations of balletic grace: the initial kissing, the sensuously slow descent of one body on to another, and then the simple fact of this scene going on longer than is normal in mainstream movies: past the decorous point at which we would generally cut to something else – increasingly inventive positions finally lead to urinating and defecating on each other’s faces, all in the same mood of candlelit tenderness.

3) Bound (1996, dirs Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski)

In effect, a sex scene in two parts, an interruptus that might in other circumstances be intended comically – comedy being the great undeclared enemy of eroticism. This sex scene is almost outrageously humid and overwrought. Corky, played by Gina Gershon, is a tough ex-con who meets Violet, a wealthy woman played by Jennifer Tilly. Their attraction is obvious, but their sex scene in Violet’s apartment, instead of being self-enclosed and delimited by the traditional tactful fadeout, gets suddenly walked in on by Violet’s mobster husband Caesar, played by Joe Pantoliano; the two women jump apart as he enters and Caesar is initially suspicious until he sees his wife is with a woman. Later, the couple resume their lovemaking on an isolated mattress. It looks very 90s now, but coolly insistent on pleasure. The Wachowskis hired sex theorist Susie Bright to choreograph this scene.

2) Ecstasy (1933, dir Gustav Machatý)

Cinema’s most famously pioneering sex scene is in the Czech-Austrian movie Ecstasy from 1933, a time when the Hays Code was clamping down on this sort of thing in Hollywood, and when in Europe Hitlerism would frown on anything other than bombastically mythic patriotism or gemütlich Merry Widow naughtiness in the cinema. Hedy Lamarr plays Eva, unhappily and sexlessly married, who has a passionate affair with a young man. Their sex scene is just a closeup on her face as this young man’s head descends; she plainly surrenders to an almighty and planet-shuddering orgasm. The tactful cutaways to various parts of the room are knowing – and then a pearl necklace is scattered to the floor, one of the most outrageously symbolic moments imaginable. A match is struck for a post-coital cigarette.

1) Don’t Look Now (1974, dir Nicolas Roeg)

Nic Roeg’s legendary deconstructed sex scene in a Venice hotel room – sex interspersed with scenes of the couple preparing to go out afterwards – was partly created by the director in order to flummox the censors. But this isn’t the only reason why the scene is so powerful – it is because it reminds us that most sex scenes are between people who are having sex for the very first time. This is a sex scene between a married couple who have had sex many times before, although it is the first time they have made love since the terrible death of their child. The sex between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie looks very real, and Sutherland has mischievously hinted something of the sort. But they look like one of the most convincing married couples I have ever seen onscreen. Their intimacy and gentleness are very moving.