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TV, Movie Sex Grows Graphic, Arouses Attention

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By MIREYA NAVARRO, The New York Times

Published: October 7, 2007

LOS ANGELES - A few years ago, Michelle Borth went topless for a movie, and she thought: 'That's it. That's my last topless scene.'

Then she read the script for the new HBO show 'Tell Me You Love Me.' The show required frontal nudity and such explicit sex scenes that the first question asked at a new conference with television critics last July was:

'Did anybody actually do it?'

The answer was no, but Borth, who plays Jamie in 'Tell Me,' is not faulting anyone for wondering.

'It's not supposed to be like any show,' Borth, 29, said. 'To keep it tame doesn't do justice to what we're doing, which is an unfiltered, candid look at relationships, and that includes sex.'

Certainly, real sex in acting is rare, but recent offerings in television and film are pushing the boundaries. Some critics have called 'Tell Me' nothing more than soft porn, and even people in the entertainment industry question just how much explicitness is necessary. Just how graphic, they ask, must sex scenes be to make a dramatic point?

'Hard-Core Art'

In the past few years, two American filmmakers, Vincent Gallo and John Cameron Mitchell, have depicted actual sex in their films - and have not been shy about admitting it. Recently, the Oscar-winning director Ang Lee earned an NC-17 rating for his 'Lust, Caution.'

These films and 'Tell Me' fall under 'hard-core art,' said Linda Williams, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of books on both pornography and cinema. They escalate the explicitness, trying to step beyond the conventional but not veer into pornography.

'We're stuck in this dichotomy of pornography's unnuanced pleasure and simulated sex, which does not allow certain kinds of representations,' she said. The new productions, she added, are redefining 'just what might be an American adult film or television show.'

Cynthia Mort, the creator of 'Tell Me,' said the point was not to make the depiction indistinguishable from real sex. 'The goal is to make it moving and emotional and intimate and, yes, uncomfortable at times, because not everyone is comfortable with sex,' she said. 'You're trying to capture that.'

In the fourth episode of 'Tell Me,' Borth's character has a fling after breaking up with her fiance. Rodrigo Garcia, the director, said the scene needed explicitness, including nudity and frantic motion, to contrast with the aftermath - her disappointment and loneliness.

Otherwise, he said: 'I'd have couples huffing and puffing under bedsheets. I don't think a wife covers her breasts with bedsheets after sex. That's an insufferable cliche in movies.'

Adam Scott, who plays the architect Palek on 'Tell Me,' said he and his wife initially had reservations about the intimacy involved, but were won over by the script, which follows three couples as they work out relationship issues.

On the show, Scott is shown nude and engages in laborious sexual play as his character tries to get his wife, played by Sonya Walger, pregnant. He said the scenes needed to match the emotions portrayed in other aspects of the characters' relationship, which frays under the strain of not being able to conceive.

'I feel the audience would be cheated if we say we're doing a show about intimacy, and it's not intimate,' Scott said.

Value To Viewers In Question

But judging from comments on the show's Web site, viewers are split. While some appreciate the scenes ('The scenes really get you to a true place,' one viewer wrote), others find them distracting and unnecessary.

Another viewer wrote: 'I can understand having examples of problems for people to deal with, but you don't need to show a full sex scene between two people. It's like a second generation Playboy channel.'

Some film historians question whether audiences really lose out if there is more modesty.

'I'm not sure the general audience cares as much as filmmakers do in terms of how graphically it's shot,' said Patricia King Hanson, editor of the American Film Institute's catalog of feature films. 'If you have kissing and partial nudity, is that less effective than if you showed them copulating on screen?'

Some actors agree that some territory shouldn't be explored for the sake of a film or a show.

Ashley Jones, 30, an actress on the soap opera 'The Bold and the Beautiful,' often acts in scenes requiring vigorous pretending, but she said she balked at anything racier in her acting career. 'To me, you can get the same message across and leave something to the imagination,' she said. 'When you get out there suddenly you feel too exposed, and you think, 'This doesn't feel like I'm an actor. This feels like I'm doing it.'

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