The 30 Sexiest Gay Scenes In Film

9. 

Un Chant D'Amour 
(A Song of Love) 

dir. Jean Genet
1950

"My favorite movie male-on-male love scene is one in which the male couple are separated by a cell wall but brought together by a straw and a shared lungful of smoke. Is this is a bad sign? Jean Genet's Un Chant D'Amour, his only movie, is set, of course, in a prison. A middle-aged prisoner knocks on his cell wall, frantically trying to attract the attention of his younger neighbor, who is dancing with himself in a dirty vest with a face as tender as it is tough. The old lag lights a cigarette, inserts a straw through a tiny hole, and blows smoke through it into the next cell. After studiously feigning disinterest, the young brute finally kneels at the wall, closed-eyed and open-mouthed, and receives the billowingn white smoke. It's a great, exquisitely poetic representation of the impossibility of romance—and even desire itself. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, I've looked at glory holes from both sides now, from blower and inhaler, from younger and older, and still it's glory holes' illusions I recall."

—Mark Simpson, writer, Metrosexy