Arthouse sex please, we're British!

Breasty Russ Meyer films and erotic thrillers on Channel 5, Cybill Shepherd extolling the delights of threesomes on So Graham Norton, the Sun's topless models, acres of newsprint devoted to Kylie's derri?re - the British appetite for titillation knows no bounds. And the more discerning cinema-goer is in for a treat this spring with several arthouse movies exploring various aspects of the libido.

Directed by Palme d'or winner Shohei Imamura, the delightful Warm Water Under A Red Bridge tells the story of a disillusioned man on a quest. But rather than the golden Buddha he hoped to find, the hero comes across what I, as a Frenchman, would call une femme-fontaine. Cue gushing orgasms of an ear-shattering magnitude very tactfully depicted by the Japanese master. Yet the central premise of this mystical, magical fable is handled so artfully that you could take your mother or your partner along and not be embarrassed. Ai No Corrida it ain't!

At the other end of the spectrum, Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer shows a despondent director who goes back to making X-rated films to pay off his debts. Jean-Pierre L?aud, a long-time associate of the late Fran?ois Truffaut, plays the title role opposite bona-fide porn star and philosophy graduate Ovidie. 'The scenes in the film are not pornographic but merely dramatic. It is Jacques facing his failure. I hope that the public will not focus too much on the screen sex,' says Bonello. Some chance - a graphic 'money shot' is currently exercising the minds of the British Board Of Film Classification, the country's moral guardians when it comes to matters filmic.

They have been there before, of course, having given the green light to Mark Rylance's towering manhood in 2000's French-helmed Intimacy. They also recently approved the rampant folie ? deux scenario of Read My Lips directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos, and Baise-moi (US title: Rape Me) - a Thelma & Louise from hell which caused a furore on its release in France last year.

Not to be outdone by the Japanese or the French, the Spanish-speaking world seems determined to capitalise on recent successes such as Mexico's Amores Perros with steamy flicks such as Y Tu Mama Tambien, in which director Alfonso Cuar?n strokes the hoary road movie back to life with the sexy Spanish actress Maribel Verd? and two adolescents ready for whatever, while Julio Medem's torrid Sex And Lucia is about to turn lead actress Paz Vega into the new Pen?lope Cruz - if only she can keep her clothes on long enough.

But what if you don't fancy your thought-provoking eye-candy with subtitles? Anglo-Saxon film-makers don't have a clue when it comes to getting the imagination and the pulses racing. Seriously saucy is about as good as it gets - with the 'punani' references in Ali G In Da House just the latest addition to a lowbrow tradition stretching back through the Cynthia Payne biopic Personal Services to the Confessions and Carry On series.

There are exceptions. In 1994, Joan Collins, complete with riding crop - 15 years after her defining performances in The Stud and The Bitch - rode Steven Berkoff in Decadence, an attempt at the satirical high road. It was a resounding flop. And sure, Ken Russell's adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love proved a defining late Sixties moment. But what is it remembered for? The homoerotic wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. They don't call it le vice anglais for nothing.

On the plus side, the sexual misbehaviour of foreigners does provide Brit fantasies with powerful fuel. It's no accident that Monica Belluci, B?atrice Dalle, Sylvia Kristel, Catherine Deneuve and Sophia Loren have all been potent sex-symbols to successive generations, though Brigitte Bardot came perilously close to becoming unstuck when she starred with Dirk Bogarde in Doctor At Sea.

For a really sensual arthouse movie about British women you've got to look over the Channel at Fran?ois Truffaut's Les deux anglaises et le continent. Of course, only a Frenchman would be presumptuous enough to think he can satisfy two British girls. However, given the lack of adult arthouse films from these isles, his assumption might be justified. Last Tango In Paris anyone?

Warm Water Under A Red Bridge opens Fri 15 Mar, Y Tu Mama Tambien opens Fri 12 Apr, The Pornographer opens Fri 19 Apr, Baise-moi opens Fri 3 May, Sex And Lucia opens Fri 10 May, Read My Lips opens Fri 24 May.