Body Parts: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s Docu about the Evolution of Sex Scenes in Film and TV

What goes into creating and then sustaining an erotic mood? How does a sex scene get made?

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s clever film, Body Parts gives some answers to these questions.

In the process, it places its findings into the politics of pleasure, the #MeToo movement and an unearned triumphant narrative of women’s empowerment.

Linda Williams, film scholar and author of Screening Sex, talks about the role that the media has played in shaping our relationship to sex. How movies depict libidinous activities informs mainstream understanding of and conversations around desire and pleasure.

She gives an overview of the sexiest period in cinema (the 1920s and 30s) and charts how the introduction of the Hays Code in 1934 dramatically changed that. Suddenly, there were guidelines for what was considered appropriate for the public, and sex was depicted as a fatal — instead of pleasurable — act.

Interviews with actors, like Jane Fonda, and several directors and screenwriters anchor these scholarly bits in more contemporary anecdotes.

Fonda speaks candidly about moments early in her career when she felt pressure to get naked, lest she risk curtailing her career.

Other actors share similar stories of coercion.

Still others discuss troubling stories of disassociating to endure doing a sex scene.

These distressing testimonies and experiences aren’t limited to white, non-disabled, cisgender, heterosexual women.

Body Parts examine depictions of sex — or lack thereof — for people across racial, ethnic, gender and disability spectrums.

Media scholar Stephane Dune walks viewers through the Blaxploitation film era, explaining how it pushed representations of Black sexuality.

Director Angela Robinson touches on the dearth of queer depictions of desire.

Guevara-Flanagan gives viewers a tour of the sex-scene industry, speaking with the various participants.

Body doubles are a group of non-unionized actors who stand in for performers during sex scenes. Shelley Michelle, one of the body doubles interviewed, describes the profession, likening one audition to a “cattle call.” Your individual body parts are assessed with clinical precision, and if chosen to be in a film there’s little chance you receive credit.

The docu offers a look at intimacy coordinators at work, showing how a sex scene is constructed. A couple of directors and cinematographers talk about how they shoot these scenes.

Body Parts wobbles when it treads into the #MeToo movement and the issue of consent in Hollywood.

The allegations against James Franco and Harvey Weinstein are given some consideration, as is the fact that these two are merely the tip of the iceberg in an industry deeply rooted in white supremacy and misogyny.

The conclusion, that all of this will change if more women are hired, is both too optimistic and unwarranted.