François Ozon's Scènes de lit (1997)

As suggested in the title, these are bed scenes, although certainly not of a voyeuristic nature – in fact there're mostly awkward, even impossible. Ozon shot this 26-minute film in a bored moment, but I wouldn't write it off as trifling. We have sex seen from different, er, angles here, but by no means in an insalubrious sense. I've no idea if the scenes here are typical or untypical – no one can know, because by definition the sex act (not that it's visible here) is unseen. These are perhaps suggestions of happenings (or most probably non-happenings) in bed. There are seven titled scenes here:

–– 'Le trou noir': a man (François Delaive) goes to a prostitute to witness her renowned feat: performing fellatio while singing La Marseilliaise.

–– 'Monsieur Propre': A couple are about to have sex when the man talks about his belief that personal hygiene is a capitalist weapon, and that he doesn't wash. Unsurprisingly, the woman leaves.

–– 'Madame': A fifty-two-year-old woman picks up a nineteen-year-old guy and they end in bed together, although the woman is unsure. The young man does his best, but they remain in bed, separate.

–– 'Tête bêche': A man and a woman lie in bed in the head to toe. She counts down from one hundred in Spanish while the man alternates the countdown in French. They become increasingly excited as they near 69, which marks the end and the beginning, presumably, of them practicing soixante-neuf.

–– 'L'Homme idéal': A woman is distraught because her lover has left her, but on playing out the role of her partner to her female friend, the two become sexually involved with one another.

–– 'Love in the Dark': A man cannot have sex with a woman because she doesn't want to turn out the light, whereas the man can't have sex with the light on. In the end, he masturbates without the woman doing anything.

–– 'Les Puceaux': Virginity, but of a different kind: one of the men hasn't had sex with a man, whereas the second hasn't had sex with a woman. Slowly, first via fellatio, the homosexual virgin begins his initiation ceremony.

We can see the extreme subjectivity, the lack of ability to concern oneself with others, in the males in 'Monsieur Propre' and 'Love in the Dark' as for example in Bruno with regard to Rosette in Ozon's adaptation of Montherlant's play Le Lever du rideau. And change of sexual identity is present here too in 'Les Puceaux' and 'Love in the Dark'.