Summer is a temporary escape from everyday life, where the usual rules are suspended. Days are long, hot and languid, but often boring. We spend more time outside, in the sun. We take our clothes off at the beach and the pool. We lounge in parks and gardens. We eat, sweat and, often, lust. Emotions are heightened; summer is the season of transgression.
The relationship between sun and sin can be seen in many iconic films. Some of the greatest romances unfold over the course of a summer, while others use the heat and freedom of the season to explore the darker sides of sex and obsession. I have selected ten personal favourites that approach summer’s hedonism in more perverse ways. Some are raunchy, even X-rated, while others are more fascinated by heated glances and the eroticism of a single touch. Each film, for me, captures the beauty and intensity of a long, hot summer – albeit one that leaves its characters changed forever.
LAST SUMMER (2023)
Queen of controversy Catherine Breillat’s most recent film, Last Summer, follows a married lawyer who embarks on an affair with her teenage stepson. Starring Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher, and set in an affluent Parisian suburb at the height of the season, Last Summer reworks the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts into a luminous tragedy of passion and transgression. Returning after a decade away from filmmaking, Breillat proves she remains one of cinema’s great chroniclers of amour fou. Complex, humane and beautiful, Last Summer is one of the auteur’s finest works.
ACCIDENT (1967)
Joseph Losey’s Accident turns a languid English summer into a study of sexual rivalry. The 1967 Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winning film follows two married Oxford academics, Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) and Charley (Stanley Baker), as they compete for the affections of their student, Anna (Jacqueline Sassard). The setting is idyllic – lunches in the garden, cricket and tennis, long afternoons in the countryside – but beneath the rituals of middle-class summer leisure lies a world of jealousy, desire and deception. Harold Pinter’s screenplay turns polite conversation into a battlefield, while Losey uses the lush landscape as a backdrop for one of British cinema’s most devastating portraits of amorous infatuation.
CRAZED FRUIT (1956)
There is longing in every frame of Kō Nakahira's Crazed Fruit, a sensational 1956 summer drama, a ‘Sun Tribe’ film often described as Japan's answer to Rebel Without a Cause. Set around the coast of Kamakura, it follows the introverted Haruji and his gregarious older brother, Natsuhisa, as they compete for the affections of the alluring (and married) Eri. The characters spend their holiday sailing, waterskiing, smoking, gambling, and kissing illicitly. Years before the French New Wave popularised its restless visual style, Nakahira was experimenting with exhilarating camerawork and editing, giving the film an extraordinary sense of youthful momentum. Crazed Fruit is a treasure, brimming over with barely-veiled summer sexuality.
CLAIRE‘S KNEE (1970)
Any one of Rohmer’s summer films could have found a place on this list, but I’ve opted for Claire’s Knee, the fifth of his Six Moral Tales and one of his most erotic works. Holidaying by Lake Annecy, Jérôme (Jean-Claude Brialy) becomes acquainted with Laura (Béatrice Romand), the teenage daughter of a neighbour of an old friend, who introduces him to her half-sister, Claire (Laurence de Monaghan). Though engaged to be married, Jérôme finds himself hypnotised by Claire’s youth and beauty, becoming fixated on the seemingly trivial object of her knee. Shot by regular collaborator Nestor Almendros, the French lakeside scenery glows as Rohmer’s characters spend the long summer days developing crushes and discussing the intricacies of desire.
LA PISCINE (1969)
Is La Piscine the most iconic summer film ever made? Jacques Deray’s Côte d’Azur psychological drama stars Alain Delon and Romy Schneider as a couple whose holiday is interrupted by the arrival of an old acquaintance (Maurice Ronet) and his sultry eighteen-year-old daughter, played by Jane Birkin. One of European cinema’s most iconic former couples, Delon and Schneider reunited – at Delon’s entreaty – for the film, bringing a palpable eroticism to their characters’ volatile relationship. Luca Guadagnino later reworked the story as the 2015 film A Bigger Splash. With its rich colours, modernist design, Michel Legrand score, bronzed stars and those Courrèges costumes, La Piscine encapsulates 60s cool.
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (2013)
Stranger by the Lake is an explicit, sun-soaked gay thriller written and directed by Alain Guiraudie. The Cannes prize-winning film takes place at a lakeside cruising spot in southern France, where Franck, played by Pierre Deladonchamps, falls for Christophe Paou’s seductive but dangerous Michel, even after witnessing Michel drown his lover in the lake. What follows is a dark, intoxicating romance, notable for its ample full-frontal male nudity and unsimulated sex scenes. Guiraudie’s critically acclaimed erotic drama is an enthralling depiction of lust and obsession.
JAMÓN JAMÓN (1992)
A sensual slice of Spain from 1992, Bigas Luna’s romantic tragicomedy launched the careers of Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, who wouldn’t begin dating until they reunited on the set of Vicky Cristina Barcelona – itself a worthy contender for this list – 15 years later. The young leads are magnetic and impossibly attractive. Sexy, funny and full of food, this absurd, tempestuous romance unfolds over a sweaty Spanish summer, as the daughter of a prostitute falls for an aspiring bullfighter. Luna revels in the sensual pleasures of bodies, landscapes and appetites pushed to delirious extremes.
JE T‘AIME MOI NON PLUS (1976)
Je t’aime moi non plus is Serge Gainsbourg’s singular 1976 drama, written, directed and scored by the French provocateur himself, with his iconic song echoing throughout. Jane Birkin stars as Johnny, an androgynous truck-stop waitress who falls for the rugged trucker Krassky (Joe Dallesandro), despite the fact that he is already in a relationship… with a man. One of the strangest and most unforgettable romances of all time follows: an outrageous yet tender tale set against the sweaty, desolate landscape of Uzège. If you don’t believe me, listen to François Truffaut, who is reported to have said, “Don’t bother going to see my film, see Gainsbourg’s. That is a work of art.”
FRIVOLOUS LOLA (1998)
Tinto Brass’s Frivolous Lola is a breezy softcore comedy, full of sexual frolics and flouncing around the sunny Italian countryside. The lovable protagonist Lola, played joyfully by Anna Ammirati, is determined to sleep with her fiancé, Masetto, before their wedding night, but her beau wants to wait. A series of perverted encounters occur as Lola does everything in her power to lose her virginity to literally anyone, anywhere, anyhow… Frivolous Lola is one of Brass’s most charming and fun films, unabashedly horny and full of kitschy Italian style.
WILD THINGS (1998)
Summer boils over in this cult-classic ‘skin flick’, one of the sexiest thrillers ever made. Set among the Floridian swamps, John McNaughton’s Wild Things follows a high-school guidance counsellor accused of rape by two female students. What follows is a labyrinthine investigation packed with increasingly outrageous revelations, featuring an ensemble cast including Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Bill Murray, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Theresa Russell.
Pools, motels, swamps, yachts. McNaughton embraces sticky excess as the film reaches glorious levels of absurdity. Roger Ebert affectionately described it as “bad taste elevated to the level of demented sleaze”, and it is precisely this mix of unabashed camp and carnal intrigue that makes Wild Things so irresistible.