FROM soaring superheroes to singing witches, Hollywood has depicted most things on the big screen.
But there is one small event that rarely makes an appearance: A realistic female orgasm.
Think back to your favourite cinema sex scenes. They probably feature gorgeous people in passionate clinches, which all end at the same time — when HE does.
Now imagine them ending only when SHE is satisfied.
It would completely change that scene — and the idea of what sex is meant to look like.
Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas, is doing just that. Out on Friday, the film makes the frustrations that many women feel in bed the star of the show.
And, boy, it does not hold back.
One of the most sexually charged and provocative films to hit Hollywood, it also features an A-list actor refreshingly not afraid to bare all.
The story follows powerful company boss Romy (Kidman), who seemingly has it all.
Beautiful and successful, we first see her having sex with her husband Jacob (Banderas) in their marital bed, where she seems to be having a great time.
Still, as soon as her devoted husband is asleep, she sneaks off to another room to actually get her kicks in front of some kinky pornography on a laptop.
We later learn that Romy has not had an orgasm with her husband in their 19 years together.
And like many women before her, she is more worried about hurting one of the most delicate and dangerous things in the world — the male ego — than having sex the way she actually wants to.
This leads her into the arms of Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a young intern at her company, and the pair start a wild and risky affair.
Samuel certainly hits the spot with all his tricks. We see Romy stripping on demand and getting on her hands and knees to lick milk from a saucer.
Some of the scenes are so intimate that Kidman, 57, has said she could not “orgasm any more” during filming and needed a break.
The Oscar-winner added: “There was an enormous amount of sharing and trust and then frustration.
“It’s like, don’t touch me. There were times when we were shooting where I was like, I don’t want to orgasm any more. Don’t come near me. I hate doing this.
“I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life!
“I’m over it. It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout.”
While Kidman may have felt orgasm fatigue during filming, she has successfully represented the problem many women have, shining a light on an issue that has long been swept under the carpet of how sex is shown on screen.
Women are usually part of the scene, but the focus is rarely on them and their enjoyment.
Babygirl’s Dutch female director Halina Reijn wrote the screenplay for the film after hearing about a woman who had never experienced sexual pleasure during her 25-year marriage.
She said: “I was incredibly inspired by all the sexual thrillers of the Nineties: Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, 9½ Weeks, Indecent Proposal.
“I felt very seen by those movies because as a woman with my desires, I always felt like an alien. And those movies kind of told me that these darker desires were OK, even though, at the end of the movie, the woman mostly gets punished.
“This film is my answer — my female answer — to those films.
“In Hollywood movies, we still see women having orgasms that are physically just not possible, at least for 99 per cent of women.”
This is very true. Heterosexual women experience orgasms around 62 per cent of the time during sex, and studies have found that at least ten per cent of women have never experienced one at all.
But this giant orgasm gap is rarely acknowledged by filmmakers.
If sex scenes on films or TV were to be believed, us women would be throwing our heads back and screaming like a bad impression of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.
But then for the past few decades, men have run Hollywood, making up roughly 80 per cent of the writers, directors, producers — and it shows all too clearly in the unrealistic sex scenes.
Brilliant 2022 film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande — which tells the story of a widowed teacher (Emma Thompson) who hires a male escort (Daryl McCormack) in the hope of experiencing her first ever orgasm late in life — was the first time I had seen the problem play out.
Written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde, it was superbly realistic. Sexual health doctor Laura Jarvis spoke at the time about how there is a range of reasons why women cannot climax, saying: “Most of these women don’t have a physical problem.
“It’s about their own relationship with their sexual self, about permitting themselves to have sexual pleasure.
“These women always tell me they feel as if they’re missing out.
“Every Netflix drama, there’s people having orgasms in it. Women feel as if they’re not normal and that perpetuates the stress.”
There is also the pesky matter of timing that causes sexual inequality, with the average man orgasming within ten minutes of sex, while women take upwards of 30 minutes to achieve the same pleasure. Of course, lots of things happen in the movies that would not happen in real life.
Most people do not cling to the top of a high-speed train or win in a fight against a great white shark.
But how refreshing to see some realism finally brought to the bedroom on film sets.
In an interview before the release of Babygirl, Halina said: “I wanted to make a huge, super-entertaining juice film about sexuality, but be very honest about it.
“Sometimes I just want to see a hot, sexy movie with hot people that turns me on a little bit.”
Bravo to that.
And well done Hollywood for finally acknowledging female pleasure. You can come again.
