In the year 2001 alone, five of the Oscar nominees for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress had at one time or another performed in a film role that exhibited their nudity --

Helen Mirren Savage Messiah (1972)

Sissy Spacek Prime Cut (1972)

Kate Winslet Jude (1996)

Nicole Kidman Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Halle Berry Swordfish (2001)

• Helen Mirren (e.g., Age of Consent (1969), Savage Messiah (1972))
• Sissy Spacek (e.g., Prime Cut (1972), Carrie (1976), Welcome to L.A. (1976), Raggedy Man (1981))
• Nicole Kidman (e.g., Dead Calm (1989), Billy Bathgate (1991), Eyes Wide Shut (1999))
• Kate Winslet (e.g., Jude (1996), Titanic (1997), Hideous Kinky (1998), Holy Smoke (1999), Quills (2000), Iris (2001))
• Halle Berry (e.g., Monster's Ball (2001), Swordfish (2001))
  

American Pie 2 (2001)

The initial gross-out film from 1999 was followed by director J. B. Rogers' equally sex-oriented sequel with crude humor, the continuing sexual mis-adventures of five horny male teens with juvenile sex drives after one year of college, living at a Michigan lake-side house for the summer.

• American Pie (1999)
• American Pie 2 (2001)
• American Wedding (2003) (aka American Pie 3)
• American Reunion (2012) (aka American Pie 4)

It included the simulated sex scene (more revealing in the 'unrated' version) of two tempting females pretending to be "hot lesbians" while three of the guys were on a house-painting job:

• Amber (Lisa Arturo), blonde
• Danielle (Denise Faye), brunette

The female duo threatened and urged them to perform 'like for like' actions: "You don't touch, we don't touch," hoping to get the guys to perform humiliating homosexual actions (an ass grab, a lip kiss, etc.) in front of them. They were bargaining in their bedroom with three stammering and awkward heterosexual males:

• Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs)
• Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas)
• Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott), a party-boy

As their embarrassing dialogue was transmitted to walkie-talkies: ("My nipples are so hard"), they lesbian-kissed and then turned to request reciprocal action from the guys: "Your turn....Him. Kiss!...You want more? We want more. Go get 'em, tiger. You're gonna love it. Do it for us." When Jim and Stifler only quickly pecked at each other, the females dared them: "Make it real. You do that, we'll do anything you want." After Jim and Stifler made an attempt at another more 'real' kiss, Amber pulled down Danielle's bra and then kissed her cleavage, but their intimate scene was brief and they left the guys begging: "I want more." They then promised: "We're gonna get more physical as soon as we get some hand jobs...You do him, we love to watch" - again demanding: "You go, we go." Stifler unzipped his pants: "I need to keep this party going," but the other two guys fled from the house.

In another scene, Jim received sexual pointers and advice from ex-girlfriend and band camp geeky counselor Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) about proper love-making techniques with a 'hot girl' - foreign exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth). When he boldly declared during a practice session: "I want to feel your boobs," she cautioned: "You don't just go groping away. You gotta pre-heat the oven before you stick in the turkey." After a few warm-up kisses around her neck, she said: "Oh, you're making me wet" - but then: "I was just saying that so you could practice."

After grabbing both of her breasts through her clothing, he asked: "Does direction matter? Clockwise, counter-clockwise?" She told him that his main problem was that he was "so uptight" and that he needed to be more "comfortable in any situation." He stood up and she depantsed him, and once he became immediately aroused, she urged him to think of "non-sexual" things: "I haven't even touched you yet, and you're turning into the Sears Tower." And then she went further: "I'm gonna do something to push your threshold" -- she shoved a trumpet in his ass ("Aren't instruments fun?").

One of the film's most outrageous scenes found Jim accompanied by his father at the hospital with a medical emergency. His left hand was stuck to his penis with Crazy Bond glue ("AS STRONG AS STEEL") and his right hand adhered to a videotape cassette - it happened when he was masturbating to a porno video ("Pussy Palace") but mistook the glue for erotic lubricant. Jim's dad (Eugene Levy) told off an offended lady in the waiting room:

"My son is sitting here right now with his hand glued to his penis. But that doesn't mean anything to you, does it? Because you don't have a penis. Or maybe you do?"

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001, 1979)

Francis Ford Coppola's re-released, 'director's version' Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) of his 1979 war film included 49 more minutes of mostly unnecessary, excised scenes added - including extended scenes of nudity and melancholy-tinged sexual adventure during the boat journey upriver.

After trading sex for fuel, they encountered stranded, naive, dirt-covered and vulnerable Playboy bunnies from the evacuated USO show:

• Lance (Sam Bottoms) joined up with Playboy's Playmate of the Year Carrie Foster (real 1974 PMOY Cyndi or Cynthia Wood)
• Chef (Frederic Forrest) experienced a dream girl dalliance in the helicopter with centerfold Miss May (non-Playmate actress Colleen Camp) whom he insisted pose to resemble her magazine's pictorial

In an additional lengthy "French plantation" segment, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) had an opium-clouded sexual encounter with widowed French colonist Roxanne Sarrault (Aurore Clement) who released the mosquito-netting around the poster bed.

Bully (2001)

Director Larry Clark's controversial, raw and courageous docudrama about debased teens, hedonistic sex, and violence (due to high school revenge, and based on author Jim Schutze's book Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge) was released unrated to avoid the NC-17 kiss of death because of numerous semi-explicit scenes of unprotected sex.

It was accused of being a semi-pornographic film with good-looking teen actors that was masquerading as an issue film. This grim film was accused of being exploitative, leering, and prurient with many scenes of casual teen sex and nudity, while parents were oblivious to their repugnant teens' nefarious activities.

A questionable example of camerawork was found in two obvious, voyeuristic crotch shots of Ali (with barely concealed genitals, although partially covered by her cut-off shorts) while she climbed from the back to the front seat of a car, and in another later scene when she was on the phone while getting a pedicure.

The story was based on a real-life crime - the 1993 murder of a teen who had abused his friends and classmates. The film told about amoral, sexually-active, thoughtless, and depraved slacker teenagers in Broward County (South Florida) in the early 1990s who naively conspired to kill one of their own. Malevolent and cruel delinquent Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl) continually and sadistically victimized and persecuted his best friend - slow-witted high school dropout and surfer Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro). At a homosexual strip show, Bobby displayed his latent homosexuality when he literally pimped Marty to an older gay man by having his friend reluctantly strip and gyrate in his underwear on stage during an amateur strip night.

There were vengeful repercussions after Bobby brutally raped two female teens in the group:

• Ali Willis (Bijou Phillips), his own slim, sex-crazed girlfriend - and a single mother (during consensual sex, he forced her to watch a gay-sex porno tape and then brutally raped her when she refused)
• Lisa Connelly (Rachel Miner), Marty's adoring yet vapid girlfriend

Brutal Rape of Ali (Bijou Phillips) by Bobby

Lisa became the 'mastermind' in a plot to do away with Bobby. Blindly devoted to Marty (to whom she had lost her virginity and become pregnant, although it was entirely possible that Bobby had impregnated Lisa during the rape), 17 year-old Lisa insistently urged a group of friends and acquaintances to seek revenge against Bobby who was berating and abusing her lover. Ali was used as the bait, to promise Bobby blow-jobs and sex at out-of-the-way secluded places so that he could be killed.

During their first homicidal attempt, Lisa cowardly froze with her mother's gun in her hand pointed at the back of Bobby's head while he was having sex with Ali on the hood of a car. A second plan was more successful when a group of seven half-witted, dysfunctional teens (including Ali, Marty, and Lisa) used knives and a baseball bat to kill him in a remote swamp area, and then dump his body in shallow canal water. The other conspirators were Ali's old boyfriend - drugged-up Donnie (Michael Pitt), Ali's girlfriend Heather (Kelli Garner), Lisa's brutish and dumb, video-gaming cousin Derek (Daniel Franzese), and a self-proclaimed and experienced "hitman" (Leo Fitzpatrick).

In the aftermath, the characters bickered over who was the most guilty, blamed others, and were confused about their alibis. Derek nervously revealed the murder to a friend when he asked for an alibi, Ali phoned in an anonymous tip on a hotline, and the contemptible Lisa stupidly bragged to her dumbfounded friend Claudia (Nathalie Paulding) about what they had done, before they were all arrested.

The Center of the World (2001)

Director Wayne Wang's (known for The Joy Luck Club (1993)) erotic, semi-pornographic drama was the grim story of a three-day weekend - a sexual contract worth $10,000. It was released unrated (undoubtedly would have been NC-17 for anal and oral sex and prolonged foreplay scenes, and especially for its infamous early scene of a stripper (porn star Alisha Klass) inserting a lollipop into herself).

Although both were often naked, the lead actors had body doubles for some portions. The film was shot with natural light on Hi-Def digital video (looking washed out). The two main players in the film were:

• Richard Longman (Peter Sarsgaard), a rich, apathetic, and lonely Internet dot.com entrepreneur/geek
• Florence (Canadian actress Molly Parker), a tough-minded stripper and lap-dancer at the upscale Pandora's Box club, also a part-time rock drummer and former locksmith (symbolically freeing helpless animals or people from locked cars)

When Richard was becoming depressed and uncaring about his work and responsibilities, he hired his favorite lap-dancer Florence from the club to travel with him to Las Vegas as a paid escort, staying in a deluxe hotel room, with the following ground rules:

• a 'no-strings-attached' relationship
• no emotional feelings talk
• no kissing on the mouth
• no penetration
• her own room
• restricted sexual contact hours of only four hours per night

In one early scene, Florence asked him: "Do you have a secret fantasy?...Tell me" - and he whispered in her ear about a very taboo anal sex practice with alcohol and an ice cube called "fire and ice." She also provided the title of the film, asserting that the "center of the world" was not Richard's laptop and the Internet but a woman's 'c--t' from which all life flowed ("Without sex, none of us would be born. And we are all born out of a woman's c--t. It is the center of the world. And the more we can do to glorify that holy spot, the more we're doing for mankind").

The film included various sexual scenes and by its denouement, Richard had slowly fallen in love with Florence, and was allowed to have penetrative intercourse with her, but then was devastated when she faked orgasm, resisted an emotional bond, and said she was only doing it for the money ("What did you think, that I was falling in love with you?...You can't buy my feelings...It's about money. You have it and I don't. You pay me to do this, so I did it"). Angered by her lack of real feelings, Richard began to brutally and sexually humiliate or rape her, by roughly penetrating her from behind, exclaiming: "You wanna f--kin' feel something?"

Shortly later, there was a parting-of-the-ways scene in which Florence masturbated sitting on the floor with her legs spread in front of Richard, as she defiantly told him: "You want real? I'll give you real." She then departed and the two didn't see each other again until they met up at the club, where she again sexually entreated him for business - their regular lap-dance routine. Since then, he had become a multi-millionaire due to his successful IPO. The non-linear nature of the film made it difficult to tell when they met at the club.

It was also criticized for the scenes of Flo's menstrual blood on her dress and the bedspread (after Richard fingered her), and for part-time prostitute Jerri (Carla Gugino), Flo's bi-sexual friend (they kissed in one scene), who described how she once experienced a female squirting orgasm similar to male ejaculation ("I am having this orgasm like I have never had before, and all this stuff starts shooting out of me, like a guy shooting his load...This turns him on...he knows I'm not faking it"). She appeared bruised at the hotel room after being pummeled by her thuggish boyfriend for not having another one of her spectacular but uncontrollable orgasms, and was generously offered $2,000 by Richard - her fee that the guy had taken back from her purse. This incited some jealousy from Florence and comparative insight about being prostitutes who exchanged sex for money:

"I mean, you're f--king him for the money, right?...You're here to get paid...And we are the same."

Fat Girl (2001, Fr.) (aka A Ma Soeur!)

Provocative French director/writer Catherine Breillat's disturbing, controversial, and explicit unglamorous view of the painfulness of adolescent sexuality followed her earlier films about virginal deflowering, including A Real Young Girl (1976, Fr.).

[Breillat's later film, Sex Is Comedy (2002, Fr.) was a fictional account of the filming of Fat Girl, by Breillat's alter-ego director Jeanne (Anne Parillaud). She was filming the scene in which young virginal Actress (Roxane Mequida, who played the same character in Fat Girl) was seduced by an older Italian boy Actor (Grégoire Colin, who did not appear in the original film), wearing a prosthetic penis.]

It told about overweight, over-eating, under-appreciated 13 year-old Anais Pingot (Anais Reboux), with an imaginative sexual fantasy life, who prophetically thought she should lose her virginity to an anonymous anybody:

"The first time should be with nobody."

She was contrasted to her pretty and thin 15-year-old sister, Elena Pingot (Roxane Mesquida), who was on the verge of losing her own virginity, while they were on a holiday on the south French coast with their mother (Arsinee Khanjian).

Within her sister's view in their shared room where disdainful Anais pretended to be asleep, night-gown wearing, under-aged Elena lost her virginity to insincere, deceitful yet charming Italian college law student Fernando (Libero de Rienzo) in an explicit, discomfiting scene. He broke down her defenses and stole her innocence (essentially by rape) through continued coaxing, manipulation and relentless persuasion. He assured her:

"All the girls take it the back way...That way, it doesn't count. They can say that they've never slept with anyone...It's not sick. It's a proof of love."

In another shocking scene (that was seriously excised for DVD/video release) in the film's conclusion, an assailant attacked the family's car, smashed the windows with an axe and brutally murdered Elena and her mother. Anais also had her first sexual experience - she was sexually assaulted in a brutal rape (an imagined fantasy?) by the total stranger in the nearby woods. She told police, in her warped view of events, that the sex was consensual and that she was pleased about losing her virginity.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

This exceptional anime-like film, done completely in astronomically-expensive CGI over a four year period was the first photo-realistic, computer-generated feature film with convincing, accurately-detailed, life-like flesh-and-blood characters, inspired by a best-selling series of video games by the film's director, Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Its main character was smart and slim virtual brunette heroine Aki Ross (voice of Ming-Na), looking like a curvier version of actress Bridget Fonda, who sought to save the world, combat the ghostlike enemy forces and defend Earth's survivors by "collecting" Eight Spirits.

Following the film's release, men's magazine Maxim created a bikinied version of the sexy 'synthetic actress' that readers voted as one of its Hot 100 - its first computer-generated entry.

The Hole (2001, UK)

Nick Hamm's straight-to-video psychological thriller, told with Rashomon- or Memento- style point-of-view flashbacks, starred American Beauty's Thora Birch and co-starred waifish 15 year-old Keira Knightley (in one of her earliest film appearances). The film has become notable almost solely for Knightley's nude scenes in the film -- flashing herself in a window and as an unclothed corpse in the morgue.

British private school student Frankie (Keira Knightley) endured suffering (and died from bulemia-related heart failure) with three other schoolmates while unexpectedly locked and left in an abandoned underground bomb shelter ("the hole") due to a lover's triangle.

[Note: Knightley also appeared semi-nude in two 2005 films: Domino (2005) and The Jacket (2005), and also in the next year's Silk (2006).]

Intimacy (2001, Fr.)

Director Patrice Chéreau's French arthouse film, her first English-language film, was noted for extremely graphic and explicit sex scenes, heretofore unseen. It was notable as the first theatrically-distributed film to clearly depict the act of fellatio.

This film controversially revealed both physical, stark and hard-core psychological nakedness in their sexual couplings, with numerous, unflattering and raw, wordless sexual encounters including uncensored fellatio, between two individuals in dreary London:

• Claire (Kerry Fox), an aspiring amateur actress, married
• Jay (Mark Rylance), an emotionally-cold and lonely, divorced bar manager

Claire engaged in a series of once-weekly, Wednesday afternoon, emotionally-apathetic, physical encounters with Jay.

Iris (2001)

Director Richard Eyre's multi-Oscar-nominated period drama, based on John Bayley's memoirs Elegy for Iris, surveyed the life-long romance between a British novelist and her husband, from their student days to their latter years of life, told in two parts.

The biopic drama starred Kate Winslet in the first half of the film as young, vivacious British novelist Iris Murdoch -- a fearless exhibitionist and energetic, spirited libertine Oxford University student who enjoyed sex, and frequently loved to go skinny-dipping in contrast to her virginal, balding, bookwormish and stuttering boyfriend John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) who wouldn't remove his undergarments.

Iris Murdoch (Kate Winslet) Skinny-Dipping

He was her future husband - fellow professor John Bayley (Oscar-winning Jim Broadbent), when later in life, the aging, declining-in-health Iris was portrayed by Judi Dench, when she was ravaged by Alzheimer's disease and cared for by him.

Jason X (2001) (aka Friday the 13th, Part 10)

This new Jason X film, aka Friday the 13th, Part 10 (2001), the first one in almost a decade, was the first science-fiction/horror film of the series, with some intentional references to Star Trek and to the Terminator and Alien films.

In one sequence, mindless cyborg killer, Uber-Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) was tricked into entering a virtual reality, or holodeck simulation of "Camp Crystal Lake, circa 1980" (the setting of Friday the 13th (1980)) that was designed to distract him with new victims.

There he encountered VR Teen Girl # 1 and 2 (Tania Maro and Kaye Penaflor) - programmed to be stereotypical "horny girls" who teasingly asked him:

"Hey, do you wanna beer? Or do you wanna smoke some pot? Or we could have premarital sex?"

The two removed their tops and giggled: "We love premarital sex!" After they climbed into their sleeping bags, he beat them to death by bashing their sleeping bags together, and he smashed one of them against a tree. The scene appeared to spoof the Puritanical idea in the entire series of slasher films that sex led to death.

In an earlier sequence in the film, android KAY-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder) was having nipples positioned onto her prosthetic breasts, but they fell to the floor. She asked love-interest Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell) to evaluate them: "Do you like them?" Her responded:

"Why do you want those things, anyways?...I like you just the way you are. I think you're perfect."

As in all of the films in the series, the act of sex awakened Jason's murderous impulses. In this one, two horny students Stoney (Yani Gellman) and Kinsa (Melody Johnson) stripped down to have sex in his cabin. As Stoney tongued down the length of her body and heated her up by removing her panties before intercourse, Jason was also thawing in a nearby lab from over 400 years of cryostasis, and would shortly later murder Stoney (within Kinsa's sight) with an autopsy machete.

Les Jolies Choses (2001, Fr.) (aka Pretty Things)

Before actress Marion Cotillard won a milestone Best Actress Oscar award for the biopic La Vie En Rose (2007) for her portrayal of singer Edith Piaf, she starred in Gilles Paquet-Brenner's melodramatic French action-thriller in a dual role.

It was adapted from the work of subversive French feminist writer Virginie Despentes (author of the rape-revenge story made into a film, Baise-Moi (2000)).

Cotillard portrayed identical twin sisters in a love/hate relationship that were complete opposites (for example, extroverted/introverted):

• Lucie F., an outgoing, domineering fashion pin-up model
• Marie, a more reserved, quiet, laconic and introverted personality

When outgoing fashion model Lucie received an exclusive French recording contract but couldn't perform because she couldn't sing, her talented sister Marie took her place in Paris, leading to haunting consequences afterwards, when Lucie committed suicide.

She appeared in a revealing love-making scene in the film, in which her white robe was opened, her black panties removed, and she was taken from behind. Afterwards, she laid in bed with her arms folded across her middle, while the male kissed her right breast before leaving.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

This off-beat yet witty hit sleeper comedy made the point that lesbianism (and bisexuality) was becoming more and more acceptable (as lesbian chic) on screen, and that love and sexual attraction weren't limited to heterosexuals. This independent film, with nothing more than kissing (or heavy petting) on screen, followed the ensuing development of the relationship between an unlikely pair of females:

• Jessica Stein (co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt), a romantically frustrated, young, single, 28 year-old neurotic Jewish heterosexual; also a NYC copy-editor, a book-aholic and insomniac
• Helen Cooper (co-writer Heather Juergensen), a 30-ish, sensual, bi-sexual, dark-haired art gallery manager in Greenwich Village

In the romantic comedy, after Jessica suffered a series of dating disasters, she answered, with trepidation, a 'Women Seeking Women' personal ad placed by Helen in the Village Voice. Helen, who had said that she was willing to accept a new challenge - announced that she would 'try' lesbianism and be "with" a woman: ("I took out an ad for Christ's sake. And I ended up with the Jewish Sandra Dee").

They were compatible in many respects, although Helen was more assertive and confident, while Jessica was more reserved and reluctant. Their biggest issue was the fact of their gender sameness when it came to sexual intimacy ("So, I figure if we keep going like this, we'll get there in, like, two weeks or so - There's no real rush"). Through extended make-out sessions, they practiced becoming lovers and finally consummated their love for each other (in Jessica's own childhood bedroom), but never wholly satisfactorily.

In one of the film's more sensual scenes, two pick-up guys in a bar-restaurant spoke to the pair about lesbianism, after Helen asked them a few questions: "We were just wondering whether a woman who's only been with men could ever be sexually attracted to a woman?", "What is that male obsession with lesbian sex about? I don't get it", and "Tell us exactly, exactly what it is about two women together that you find sort of exciting?" Meanwhile under the table, Helen secretly stroked Jessica's thigh and excited her, causing her to jump.

In the film's extensive dialogue, they also discussed examples of "sexy" and "ugly" men ("Harvey Keitel. Very sexy-ugly"), the blending of colors for lipstick, how sex with a woman was different than with a man, and the actual mechanics of sex: lesbians' use of various high-tech accessories or accoutrements (dildos) vs. the "standard, organic, old-fashioned way."

As their relationship progressed, and they actually came out declaring that they were a couple, their pairing ultimately disintegrated. When she reasserted her primary sexual interest in women, Helen left Jessica, who also had lost interest in experimenting with homosexuality. The two remained friends, however. Helen took a new female lover, and Jessica began to reconnect with and date ex-boyfriend Josh Myers (Scott Cohen).

Layover (2001)

Director Alan McElroy's R-rated plot-twisting, complex techno-thriller (with the tagline "A Deadly Seduction") told of the deadly consequences of an airport sexcapade with a beautiful temptress.

The main duped, married male character was:

• Dan Morrison (Baywatch's David Hasselhoff), the manager of a microelectronics company
• Allayne (Sherri Alexander), his wife of eight years in a troubled marriage

He was traveling from Chicago to Tokyo with a layover in San Francisco. After squabbling with his wife over the phone, he met flirtatious, conniving femme fatale Vickie Dennis (Italian model Yvonne Scio) at the SF airport bar who came up to him and boldly propositioned:

"Let's go... F--k me. My answer is yes. I already know your answer. Let's go."

She led him to an unclaimed baggage storage room, where she stripped off her dark red dress, revealing black thong panties and a black bra. When he anxiously asked if she was a pro, she replied: "No, but as an amateur, I'm all class." She climbed on top of him, removed his trousers, and aggressively pursued love-making with him. They finished having sex as she grasped the chain-link fence behind her. When he asked: "I don't even know your name," she suggested: "Let's keep it pure. Agreed?"

It was soon revealed to Dan's surprise in the same airport bar where they met, that the woman was married to a pushy, opinionated jewel (diamond) merchant named Roy Dennis (Gregg Henry) whom he had met earlier on his previous flight. The jealous, abusive dealer suspected that Vickie was cheating on him, but didn't know that Morrison had just had sex with her - as she warned: "If only he knew I had an affair, he'd kill me, but first kill the poor bastard I did it with. Believe me, you don't know what he's like."

Dan was forced to stay and have dinner with the couple at Fisherman's Wharf and then join them for night-clubbing at Bimbo's. After a violent altercation with her husband at the club, Vickie coerced Dan into helping her escape from Roy - and at their home while she was getting her things, Dan used Roy's gun from his desk to shoot at Roy as he was struck in the head. He awoke the next morning charged with Roy's murder.

Even Vickie testified against him in the set-up - she said he had stormed upstairs and "gunned down poor Roy in his own f--king home just like you were Wyatt f--king Earp...like a man possessed" - and that she had to knock him out from behind to stop his rampage.

The twisting and convoluted plot eventually turned out badly for Vickie, as false identities and allegiances finally caught up with her blind selfishness for $18 million worth of diamonds.

L.I.E. (2001)

Director Michael Cuesta's debut feature film - a low-budget, non-prurient, coming-of-age drama - was set in suburban Long Island. The daring, non-sexually explicit, controversial independent film received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA.

It told about an unsupervised 15 year-old gay boy Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) who was in desperate need of a father figure after the death of his mother. Howie's building contractor father Marty (Bruce Altman) was no help in guiding his son.

The film opened with Howie teetering dangerously on the railing above the Long Island Expressway, with his voice-over:

L.I.E. Long Island Expressway. You got the lanes going east, and you got the lanes going west. And you also got the lanes goin' straight to hell. A lot of people have died on it. Harry Chapin, Alan Pakula, the movie director. You probably heard of them. I bet you never heard of Sylvia Blitzer, my mom. She died on a crash on Exit 52. I really miss her. It's taken a lot of people and I hope it doesn't get me.

Howie became involved with the wrong crowd, including delinquent Gary (Billy Kay) (a part-time male prostitute), and a well-respected, tough ex-military man and pedophile named Big John Harrigan (Brian Cox), who owned a bright red Cutlass with the license plate "BJ" - and often used Gary as a customer.

The film also ended with a similar voice-over:

L.I.E. Long Island Expressway. You got the lanes going east, and you got the lanes going west. And you also got the lanes going straight to hell. A lot of people have died on it. Harry Chapin, Alan Pakula, the movie director. Sylvia Blitzer, my mom. But I'm not gonna let it get me.

Lost and Delirious (2001, Canada)

This sensitively-told coming of age tale of first love was the debut English-language film of Canadian director Lea Pool. It was based on the novel The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan - and was a heartbreaking story and depiction of unrequited, teenaged lesbian love, told through the eyes of teenaged friend Mary "Mouse" Bedford (Mischa Barton) who shared the young couple's room.

It displayed the passionate, physical and emotional relationship between schoolgirl roommates in a boarding school:

• Pauline 'Paulie' Oster (Piper Perabo), a brash, feisty and renegade tomboy -- the 'lost' girl
• Victoria 'Tori' Moller (Jessica Pare), beautiful and full-bodied

One early morning, their friend Mary looked out her window and saw her two roommates kissing, not understanding the full implications: "I thought they were, like, practicing for boys." And then one night, Tori touched the bare chest of reclining Paulie before they kissed, to the tune of "Beautiful," and Mary caught them in bed the next morning. Paulie excused their unusual behavior, claiming: "She gets serious nightmares."

The Lesbian Love Scene Between Paulie (Piper Perabo) and Tori (Jessica Pare)

As the two girls continued to show their loving affection for each other (when they kissed, Tori admitted: "I'd so totally lose it, without you, P"), Mary (in voice-over) became more accepting of their lesbianism:

"I don't know if they didn't know I could hear, or just pretended they didn't know. But after a while, it was kind of, I don't know, okay. Their sounds, their whispers, their shadows became kind of, well, just like part of my dreams or something. Just the way things were."

Then after they were caught naked in bed again by many other students (including Tori's sister Allison (Emily Vancamp)), their relationship began to be challenged. To downplay rumors and suspicions of lesbianism, Tori began to claim that she was "boy crazy" and vowed that she was heterosexual: "I love guys," while asserting that Paulie was the forward one who had a crush on her and climbed into her bed.

The film's drama of unrequited love portrayed Paulie as scorned and mentally unstable, especially after Tori began to show increased interest in Jake Hollander (Luke Kirby) at R.A.B., the nearby boys' school. When Paulie spied upon Tori having sex in the woodsy outdoors with "friend" Jake next to a tree, she jealously confronted Tori when she returned to the room: "Do you always f--k your friends up against trees?" Tori sensitively reasoned with Paulie: "It's time we grew out of it. It's just not right anymore. I just want to be friends, okay?" Paulie begged back: "Don't do this to me!"

In another nighttime scene, a desperate Paulie climbed into bed with Victoria to convince her to stay with her, boasting: "I bet he doesn't know how to do what I can do for you." Although they kissed, Tori insisted: "Paulie! There'll be no more of this, okay? I love Jake." However, she assured Paulie:

"I will never love anybody the way I love you, okay? Never. You know that, and I know that. And that I will die knowing that. OK? But this can never, this can never, ever, forever be. Do you understand? This can never, ever, forever be."

Soon, Paulie became even more heartbroken and convincingly disturbed as she acted out her hurt, and ultimately met a tragic suicidal end.