Feature: This year’s Venice Film Festival highlights include a return to the erotic drama

Earlier this year, a study was published that found that sex in movies has started to drop off, at least in several films that depicted them. So it did come as a bit of a surprise when film festival season highlights out of the Venice Film Festival included the Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson-led erotic drama Babygirl, as well Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. Stateside we also saw Sean Baker’s Anora, a story about a New York exotic dancer’s relationship with a Russian oligarch, screen at the Telluride Film Festival following its success at the Cannes Film Festival. 

So for this week’s FilmWeek feature, we thought it’d be worth getting into how these films were received by those in the film community, and get into how it might translate with general audiences. We continue with FilmWeek critics Lael Loewenstein and Amy Nicholson, as well as Variety executive editor Brent Lang.