While it is rather foolish to try to find a connecting threat amidst the hundreds of films being showcased this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, one cannot help but notice that films about sex and titillation are pervasive in the schedule and generating strong distributor interest. The first big sale of the Festival was for the drama SHAME by British artist-turned-director Steve McQueen. The film, about a sex addict, features full-frontal nudity and graphic depictions of a multitude of erotic acts. In Australian director Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, a mostly nude Emily Browning is featured as a high-end prostitute used as a fetish object by her twisted clients. In the French film ELLES, Juliette Binoche stars as an investigative reporter who uncovers the hidden lives of various university students who moonlight as compliant prostitutes for their sexually deviant clients. The Michael Winterbottom film TRISHNA, about the illicit relationship between a hotel magnate and one of the resort’s maids, features lots of nudity and coupling between the attractive leads.

Although it takes place in the formal atmosphere of the early 20th century, A DANGEROUS METHOD, the newest film by Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, features erotic sequences of spanking, water sports and other s&m goings-on as it examines the origins of our modern Freudian views of sexuality and sexual perversion. Following in this trend, the most talked about film in Toronto is not even screening here. Pre-sales have gone through the roof for NYPHOMANIAC, Danish director Lars Von Trier’s next project, which will examine the erotic life of a woman from the age of zero to fifty, including graphic scenes of pre-adolescent sexual behavior that will among the most shocking ever seen on the big screen. In short, sex sells…..

Sandy Mandelberger, Toronto FF Editor