Most films about kink and desire are made by people who have clearly never had a real conversation about either. They’re either laughably inaccurate or actively harmful. But some films – a small, precious handful – actually understand power, intimacy, and the complicated ways humans want each other. Here are the ones worth your time, and a few you should absolutely skip.
The ones that get it right
Secretary (2002). The gold standard. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a woman who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital and takes a job as a secretary for a demanding lawyer, played by James Spader. What unfolds is one of the most tender, accurate portrayals of a D/s dynamic ever put on screen. It understands that BDSM is not about pain – it’s about attention. About being seen. About finding someone whose particular way of being in the world fits yours like a key in a lock. The final scene – her sitting at her desk, days after he’s told her to stay there, having chosen to remain – is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever watched. Not despite the power dynamic. Because of it.
The Duke of Burgundy (2014). A film about two women in a D/s relationship, set in a dreamlike version of the European countryside where there are no men and the entire world seems to exist only to frame their dynamic. What makes this film extraordinary is that it’s not about the beginning of a relationship – it’s about the middle. The maintenance. The negotiation. The exhaustion of always being the one in charge, and the quiet desperation of wanting to please someone whose needs keep shifting. It’s the most honest film about the emotional labour of BDSM I’ve ever seen.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). Not a BDSM film. But perhaps the best film ever made about looking and being looked at – which is the foundation of all desire. An 18th-century painter is commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of a woman who refuses to sit for it. She must observe her secretly – during walks, during meals – and paint her from memory. The act of looking becomes an act of love. The gaze becomes touch. If you want to understand why the way someone looks at you matters – watch this.
Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013). Controversial for its production history. But the on-screen portrayal of first desire – the all-consuming, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep, teenage intensity of wanting another person – is unmatched. The sex scenes are famously explicit. What’s less discussed is how accurately they capture the awkwardness of learning someone else’s body. The fumbling. The giggling. The way desire and nervousness coexist.
Phantom Thread (2017). Daniel Day-Lewis plays a controlling, obsessive dressmaker. Vicky Krieps plays the woman who refuses to be controlled – except when she chooses to be. Their relationship is a power struggle disguised as a romance, or possibly a romance disguised as a power struggle. The genius of this film is that it never tells you which. It lets the dynamic speak for itself.
Shame (2011). Michael Fassbender as a man consumed by compulsive sexuality. Not a kink-positive film – but an honest one about what happens when desire becomes compulsion. Worth watching for Fassbender’s performance and for the way it portrays desire not as fun but as prison.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976). Based on a true story. A woman and her lover engage in an escalating series of sexual acts that eventually lead to death. Not for everyone. But for those interested in the extreme end of erotic obsession – the place where desire and destruction meet – it’s essential. Watch with caution. Watch with someone you trust.
Weekend (2011). Two men meet for what’s supposed to be a one-night stand and end up spending an entire weekend together, talking and touching and slowly dismantling each other’s emotional defences. The sex scenes are intimate without being gratuitous. The dialogue is the real event. One of the best films about intimacy between men.
Bound (1996). The Wachowskis before The Matrix. A mobster’s girlfriend and a female ex-con fall in love and plot an escape. What makes this film special is the gaze – the camera looks at women the way women look at women. It’s subtle but revolutionary. Also: Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly have enough chemistry to power a small city.
Crash (1996). Not the Oscar-winning one. The David Cronenberg one. People who get sexually aroused by car crashes. It’s Cronenberg, so it’s cold, clinical, and deeply unsettling. But if you’re interested in the extreme edge of fetish – the place where desire becomes genuinely incomprehensible to most people – it’s a fascinating watch. Not a date movie. Definitely not a date movie.
The ones that get it wrong – skip these
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). You already know why. But just in case: it portrays BDSM as something a traumatised billionaire does because he’s broken, not because it’s a valid form of intimacy. The negotiation is nonexistent. The safeword is treated as a joke. Christian Grey is not a dominant. He’s a controlling abuser with a nice apartment. The film’s entire understanding of BDSM could fit on a Post-it note with room to spare.
365 Days (2020). Kidnapping is not romance. Imprisonment is not foreplay. This film is an instruction manual for everything BDSM is not – and everything that should make you run the other direction.
Great films about desire don’t just turn you on. They teach you something about yourself. These ones did for me. I hope they do for you too.
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