Credit: Avalon

Sexy and romantic are not the same thing, and if you think they are, we have quite a bit to sort out. Good thing we have Netflix to differentiate.

No, really, Netflix proves it. Set It Up wants you invested in the happily-ever-after, while Fair Play shows what happens when attraction gets tangled up with resentment, and once that genie is out of the bottle, good luck putting it back.

That is the appeal of steamy cinema, because chemistry can turn a scene into something combustible without anybody reciting sonnets or making a song and dance about love.

So if ‘Netflix and Chill’ is on the cards, skip all that saccharine stuff because these five films know desire gets more interesting when it comes with consequences.

Five steamy movies perfect for ‘Netflix and Chill’

Amar (Esteban Crespo, 2017)

Amar drops you into that first-love bubble where two people start acting like the rest of the world can wait. Laura and Carlos are 17, wrapped up in each other, and for a while, you get it, but one unanswered message can also wreck your evening, and life is over after one argument.

In a way, the film is also trying to make you nostalgic for a time, which is where it gets you: you understand why they keep holding on. Then, well, things start feeling wrong. Carlos and Laura hold on tighter when they should give each other room, and you are just watching these kids shoot themselves in the foot, but you can’t do anything to stop them.

The whole romance starts closing in around them, and Crespo does not need some twist; he just lets you watch that first-love rush turn into something neither of them knows how to step away from.

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

This Tom Cruise starrer lulls you into thinking this is going to be about a marriage hitting a rough patch, and we can’t blame it because look at the shiny premise: a couple, a Christmas party, the sort of marriage that seems fine from across the room.

Then Alice admits she once fantasised about another man and, well, that little picture cracks. Bill takes it badly and slips out into New York with his pride hanging by a thread, and before long, the night starts pulling him somewhere stranger. The film keeps getting interesting because Bill keeps pushing further. He meets a sex worker for starters and then follows a friend to a secret gathering, but do you know the crazier part?

He gets inside with a password and then realises that he may have walked into something beyond a marital sulk. Tom Cruise plays him like a man whose confidence keeps slipping, while Nicole Kidman makes Alice feel less naive than Bill assumes; by morning, the question still remains about what their fragile marriage can survive on.

Original Sin (Michael Cristofer, 2001)

By the time Original Sin gets Luis Vargas to the docks, he thinks he knows what is waiting for him: the woman from the letters and a marriage already arranged. Then Angelina Jolie steps off the ship and, well, that picture goes straight out the window.

She looks nothing like the woman he expected, and surely that should prompt a few questions. Luis ignores every one of them, of course, and that is where the film starts having fun with him.

Julia’s story keeps slipping, and Luis is not blind to it, but attraction has made a complete fool of his judgment, so each doubt gets waved away until the whole thing becomes less a romance than a trap he keeps helping to build. Come on, mate, at some point you have to wonder whether desire is worth being this gullible for.

Heatwave (Ernie Barbarash, 2022)

Heatwave starts like a workplace thriller, and then, Claire falls for a woman she meets by chance, only to discover that Eve is married to her boss, Scott Crane. Kat Graham plays Claire, whose career starts moving when that revelation drops, and from there, the affair starts looking like the worst decision she could have made.

The steam comes from Claire and Eve’s attraction, but the film does not leave it there because Scott disappears, and Claire ends up in the investigation, with every lie making her look worse.

Netflix tags the film as steamy and centred on love and obsession, which is about right. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but more of them wondering how they got into this mess in the first place. That mix of romance and suspicion makes the chemistry look like pure poison.

Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, 2015)

After a point in Magic Mike XXL, you realise that it is not a well-behaved film, and, frankly, why should it be? Three years after leaving stripping behind, Mike Lane has the furniture business he always wanted, although his relationship with Brooke is over, and things have not worked out as neatly as planned.

Then the remaining Kings of Tampa turn up with news that Dallas has ditched them, and they want one final blowout at the male-stripper convention in Myrtle Beach, for which Mike joins them, and off they go in a frozen-yoghurt van with retirement pushed firmly to one side.

The road trip is where Magic Mike XXL piles on the heat, because Mike starts helping the group scrap their tired routines and build performances around what each man can do. They stop at Rome’s Savannah club, where Mike gets back onstage, before the whole thing barrels towards Myrtle Beach and a finale built around elaborate strip routines. Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer all return, and if you came for the dancing, good lord, the film knows exactly why you are here.