The 12 Most Seductive Movies We’ve Ever Seen

Here are the most seductive movies we've ever seen.

But First: What Do We Mean by Seductive Movies?

We aren't just talking about movies in which someone is seduced. There are lots and lots of movies about seduction that are not, in themselves, seductive. A seductive movie is subtle.

Seductive movies draw you in like a warm bath... then change the temperature. By the times it's gotten too hot (or too cold) you're in, and find yourself unable to get out. The movie has seduced you.

Some of these movies are about seduction, sure. But some aren't. You'll see what we mean in this list of the most seductive movies we've ever seen.

Double Indemnity (1944)

The most seductive movie ever made about insurance, Double Indemnity starts absolutely cracking from the moment Fred MacMurray queries Barbara Stanwyck about her anklet — and gets a lecture about local traffic laws.

It's one of those magical moments where one characters seduces another and the movie seduces its audience. We wonder if anyone wonders if he'd do anything for her after that point.

Notorious (1946)

One of Alfred Hitchcock's best (and shortest) films, Notorious is the story of Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the daughter of a German spy. When American agent Devlin (Cary Grant) asks her to go undercover, he — and we — must constantly question her loyalties.

What makes the movie so seductive is that all the plot machinations depend on Alicia's character, and Hitchcock and Bergman don't make her easy to love. Which only makes us love her more, and terrified of the heartbreak that feels inevitable.

Start watching Notorious and you won't leave it until it leaves you.

Contempt (1963)

Contempt is about seduction, but also about falling out of love. Its visuals, and especially its music, are so engrossing that it's a very hard movie to stop watching once you've started.

Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is invited by a swaggering American movie producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance) to write a new adaptation of the Odyssey for a German director (Fritz Lang, playing himself).

But Prokosch has his eye on Javal's stunning wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), who is quickly losing interest in her husband. Georges Delerue's "Theme de Camille" is so passionate and engrossing that Martin Scorsese used it in Casino, where it provides a kind of cinematic shorthand for the crumbling marriage of Robert De Niro's Sam "Ace" Rothstein and his wife, Ginger (Sharon Stone).

American Gigolo (1980)

Richard Gere's Julian is undoubtedly seductive — he's the gigolo of the title, after all — but what's even more seductive is the movie's bracing, early '80s SoCal aesthetic. Giorgio Moroder's score tells us to unclutch our pearls and get with the program as writer-director Paul Schrader masterfully speeds us through the moral desert.

The movie hooks us completely, makes us question all our loyalties, shames us, and then turns all sincere at the end. Or is it just another of Julian's lines?

In the Mood for Love (2000)

One of the most gorgeously shot movies ever made, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love isn't so much a love story as an out-of-love story between two people — played by Tony Leung and (Maggie Cheung — who realize their spouses are having an affair.

The setting alone — 1962 Hong Kong — feels impossibly romantic. And the melancholic misery of the leads is strangely intoxicating.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Sofia Coppola's hypnotic Lost in Translation should not work. Very little happens, the plot is slight, and even the instigating incident — the first meeting of Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte and Bill Murray's Bob — is murky. (Do they first meet in the bar? Or the elevator? They aren't sure.) Also, are we really supposed to sympathize with two people who can't find anything to do while staying in a luxury hotel in magical Tokyo?

And yet it all works. Every tiny gesture takes on heartstopping importance, and the exquisite soundtrack imbues every moment with hope, passion or loss, often all at the same time. What feels like a seduction story turns out to be a much better story about the small comfort of friendship in a foreign land. You're overwhelmed with feeling at the end, even wondering what just happened.

It's not only on this list of the most seductive movies we've seen, but is also on our list of Excellent Movies Where Not Much Happens.

Match Point (2005)

A Woody Allen movie that feels different from every other Woody Allen movie, Match Point invites you to embrace the coolly amoral worldview of its protagonist, Chris (Jonathan Rhys Myers), an ex-tennis pro who marries into a wealthy family but finds his new status threatened by an affair with his brother-in-law's girlfriend, Nola (Scarlett Johansson, who had had an excellent run of seductive movies about seduction).

You feel every temptation Chris does, even as you know he's objectively wrong. And knowing all the things you know about Allen, you wonder if Chris' worldview in any way reflects the filmmakers, especially since Allen is too great a director to let you off the hook with cheap moralizing.

Last Days of Disco (1998)

During the difficult shoot for his excellent 1994 film Barcelona, director Whit Stillman found rare joy in a scene of young women dancing at a disco, and wondered: Why can't this be a whole movie?

The result was Last Days of Disco, which turns out to be about much more. It's about the dance between dreams and commerce, who you want to date versus who you do, and what kind of dog you want to be.

The totally beguiling cast (let by Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and the wildly underrated Chris Eigeman) are transfixing, and the soundtrack is as pleasing to the ear as Whitman's pitch-perfect dialogue.

Red Rocket (2021)

The sad, seedy, very funny story of Mikey Sabre, a man on the outs from the adult entertainment industry who sees a 17-year-old named Strawberry (Suzannah Son, actually 26) as his ticket back in.

While Mikey tries to win over Strawberry, director Sean Baker's stellar DIY filmmaking wins us over, too. We know that since Mikey is the boyishly handsome lead character of the movie, facing incredible odds, we're supposed to root for him. Can he be redeemed?

We slowly realize that almost any outcome is going to be incredibly destructive for someone... but by then Red Rocket has hooked us.

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

What seems like a story of Millennial malaise turns into a Gen X reckoning in this at-first apparently confectionary story of a talented by adrift young woman named Julie (Renate Reinsve, excellent) who suddenly finds herself very much over her head.

It's a sheer pleasure, until it becomes something much deeper — and director Joachim Trier and his co-writer, Eskil Vogt, have a light, deft hand in navigating a very surprising journey.

Hit Man (2024)

Director Richard Linklater does romance better than almost anyone — watch Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and/or Before Midnight. And Glen Powell is wildly adept at leading-man charm. They combine their talents as co-writers of this Netflix knockout, based on the true story of Gary Johnson, a professor who moonlights as a fake hit man to help cops catch people looking to have someone killed.

Gary's job is seducing people into thinking he's a real hit man — so cops can catch them on tape. It's all fun and games until he meets Maddy (Ariana Arjona), a woman who wants her controlling husband dead. Soon he's the one being seduced.

And so are we. The movie is relentlessly charming and agreeable, always staying a step or two ahead of us. It has the remarkable quality of being totally escapist and deeply philosophical.

Wild Things (1998)

We love the unrelenting, unapologetic pulpiness of Wild Things, about two high schoolers (Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, above) who accuse a teacher (Matt Dillon) of graphic misconduct — but only as part of a complicated con.

Wild Things almost encourages the audience to feel smugly superior to its tabloid subject matter — then outsmarts you again and again, in the best seductive noir tradition.

It has so many twists and turns you find yourself Everglades-deep in its world of unrepentant, glorious tawdriness. It's a lot of fun. Kevin Bacon is outstanding as a complicated cop, and Bill Murray has one of his most fun roles as a sleazy lawyer.

Like This List of the Most Seductive Movies We've Ever Seen?

Think we forgot one? Let us know in the comments.

And you might also like this list of the Strangest Movies We've Ever Seen.

Main image: Contempt. Marceau-Cocinor 

Editor's Note: Corrects main image.