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Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: The 2 Very Different Sex Scenes of 'Basic Instinct'

In our new weekly series Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy.

This week, we're gonna look at two big scenes from Paul Verhoeven's seminal 1992 masterpieceBasic Instinct, and sorry Wayne Knight, this ain't one of them...

No, I want to look at the first two times we see our main character, Michael Douglas' Detective Nick Curran, have sex with the two ladies in his life: Femme fatale Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) and the more "chaste" Dr. Beth Grant (Jeanne Tripplehorn).

In order for this to go the way I need it to go, I need us to establish one clear ground rule: Nick Curran is a moron, or at the very least, lacks the ability to know when he's being used. Throughout this film, he wantonly and brazenly endangers the lives of everyone around him to feed his own lust. He's practically an accomplice to the murder of his partner—poor George Dzundza—and is not only able to perform with Catherine mere hours after shooting Beth dead, he's positively giddy over a post-murder poke.

But long before all of that, there are those two sex scenes, and they really couldn't be more different in the way Nick treats each of the ladies involved. There's a clear aggression on his part in both of them, but where Beth becomes a borderline submissive victim to Nick's belligerence, Catherine is having none of that.

First, let's dig into Nick's first sexual encounter of the film, which happens 35 minutes in when he barges into the apartment of his police psychologist, Dr. Beth Grant. First, some background about Jeanne Tripplehorn, who plays Beth in the film. This was her first major motion picture role following a small part in a made for TV film about Abraham Lincoln, and she was best known in social circles for being Ben Stiller's long-term girlfriend.She only has one scene in the film prior to this, a psychological evaluation of Nick in which it's revealed that the two used to have a thing.

We've seen him flirt with and essentially eye fuck every woman that's come on screen up until this point, but we have no sense of how sexually aggressive he isuntil he barges into Beth's apartment. Like the controversial question of consent in the infamous sex scene from Straw Dogs before it, there are many interpretations to this scene, nearly all of which call into question Beth's consent. First and foremost, after ripping open her blouse, he furiously removes her bra and begins tongue kissing her...

This is when things begin to take a turn. He roughly manipulates her, flinging her around the room and treating her like a piece of meat. He also undeniably ignores her calls for him to stop.The audio isn't transferrable to a GIF, so I cut this one down into a smaller video for your debating...

She very clearly says "no" several times, even while she is potentially deriving some pleasure from the encounter, indicated by her moaning and reciprocating Douglas' gross tongue kisses before they move to the easy chair. This is where things go totally south for Nick and once he has come—inside of her, without a condom, at the height of AIDS paranoia, I might add—she rightfully gets pissed off at him and storms off while he puts his pants back on like a total doofus...

With his sexually aggressive techniques and a textbook superiority complex, Nick seems like an easy mark for a femme fatale, whichbrings us, of course, to Catherine Tramell. Sharon Stone wasn't quite the unknown that Jeanne Tripplehorn was when she took the female lead role in this film, but this role would inform nearly every career choice she subsequently made. Stone absolutely explodes onto the screen from her very first scene and carries the entire film on her back. She also, crucially, knows enough about Nick to know exactly how to manipulate him into being an accomplice to her crimes, however unwittingly.

After 71 minutes of flirting andmore of Douglas' signature creepy tongue kisses,Nick and Catherine finally get down to business, and it's quite a different Nickwe get to see here. He starts off super aggressive, like he did with Beth, and you can can catch a glimpse of Douglas' dong dangling down as he attempts, once again, to maneuver his pants off with his legs rather than just using his hands to take them down like a normal person...

He also shows more tenderness with Catherine, proving thathe considers them to be sexualequals by starting their lovemaking session with some cunnilingus...

Granted, he goes down on her forall of about tenseconds, but that's far more attention than he paid Beth's lady business. After a few minutes of shifting positions, Catherine proves to Nick that he absolutely shouldn't trust her...

In the final, masterful bit of mind-fuckery, she rears back just as we saw her do with Johnny Boz in the opening scene, only this time, she doesn't grab an ice pick to kill him as he cums...

Had Nick been paying any attention prior to this scene, he'd have known that Catherine was exerting her dominance over him. Roughly thirty minutesafter this sex scene, she takes the crucial first step in seducing Nick by pulling out her breasts when his back is turned...

He turns around and her tits are already out. This isn'tBeth, where he has to walk in and act like a god damned caveman, tearing off her clothing. Catherine really gets him. She gives this dolt exactly what he's always wanted, which is why she can seduce him so easily. It's also why she keeps that ice pick under the bed in the final shot. Should she ever lose a use for him and his maniac antics, she can just get rid of him.

Also, immediately following their love making, Douglas has a chat with Catherine's other lover Roxy (Leilani Sarelle), as he puts it, "man to man," wherein he essentially espouses his belief that every lesbian is just waiting around for a good deep dicking, and he's happy to have been the one to get Catherine back on the straight side of her bisexual equation. Nick Curran is one of cinema's great losers, like a fox who always thinkshe's got the drop ona chicken, even while the farmer has a gun pointed directly at his head.

It's one half of a great pair of performances from Douglas and Stone,with Stone repeatedly schooling Douglas all while he thinks he has the upper hand. Yes, Basic Instinct is a sexy movie and it's best remembered for all the sex and nudity, but Verhoeven's masterful direction and the perfectly pitched lead performances elevate it to being a first rate thriller.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...

The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now

Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut in Under the Skin