Gay Sex Scenes That Made Movie History

Parting Glances (1986)
Parting Glances came out the year after Buddies, and also took on the theme of AIDS in the gay community. It was directed by Bill Sherwood, who died of AIDS in 1990, and starred Steve Buscemi in his first film role.

The story centers around Michael (Richard Ganoung), whose current lover, Robert (John Bolger), is about to leave the country to work in Africa for a year, and whose former lover and best friend, Nick (Buscemi), has AIDS. It's set in a Manhattan of witty banter and unconventional relationships, and while the sex in this film is minimal, it is used effectively to showcase the disconnection between Michael and Robert, and contrast it with the emotional intensity of the connection between Michael and Nick.

Steve Buscemi (left) and Richard Ganoung

Unlike Buddies, Parting Glances has aged beautifully, and is particularly successful in its underlying assumption that gay people and our experiences — including our sexual experiences — are a fully integrated part of the world and of life, love, and loss.

Hotness: 3
Romance: 10
Significance: 10

Maurice (1987)
Based on the novel by gay author E.M. Forster, the nature of sex between men is at the very heart of the story.

Written starting in 1913 (although only published after Forester's death in 1971) and set in the early 1900s, Maurice, like Another Country, takes place at an upper class school in Britain. In fact, many of the same actors appear in the smaller roles, and the actor who plays Maurice, James Wilby, at times bears a striking resemblance to Cary Elwes.

Maurice's first love is schoolmate Clive Durham, played by Hugh Grant. Clive confesses his love to Maurice, who rejects him, only to admit his love later on. The two kiss passionately, but during an idyllic country picnic, Clive convinces Maurice that their relationship would reach its highest levels of honor only if it remained platonic.

James Wilby (left) & Rupert Graves in Maurice

While visiting Clive and his wife in the country one weekend, Maurice meets and has sex with the new groundskeeper, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), after Alec climbs in his bedroom window in the middle of the night. It is apparently Maurice's first sexual experience, and it changes his life. The lovers have two more sexual encounters in the film, one in a boathouse and the other in a London hotel, before parting, supposedly for life. There is a probably unrealistic happy ending, however, and the two spend one last night at the boathouse before embarking on a life together.

Maurice is notable both as a novel and as a film for being about not just homosexuality as an identity but specifically about sex between men as an act of personal expression and even liberation.

Hotness: 7
Romance: 10
Significance: 7

The golden age of gay male sex in film came to an end in 1987, but not before the U.S. release of two foreign films. One was Pedro Almodovar's Law of Desire, starring a youthful Antonio Banderas, who plays a jealous young man sexually obsessed with a film director. In sharp contrast to the romantic glow of Maurice, Almodovar's characters are deeply flawed, their lives disastrous, and the film not only doesn't end happily, it couldn't possibly end happily.

Eusebio Poncela (left) and Antonio Banderas in Law of Desire

This was the first Almodovar film to really make a huge international splash, and while reviews were mostly good, it's only now, 20 years later, that the plea at its heart, for everyone to be themselves and specifically against living a sexually closeted existence, stands out most clearly. It's also notable for a very sexually explicit performance by Banderas, which contrasts sharply with his sexless characterization of Tom Hanks' lover in Philadelphia, an American film released six years later.

Hotness: 7
Romance: 5
Significance: 8