6. Incest - Spanking the Monkey
With a title that cheeky, it seems like David O. Russell's audacious debut feature could really only be about one thing, which isn't really kinky at all. However, O. Russell's dark comedy is actually about a young man named Raymond (Jeremy Davies) who spends the summer hanging out with his mother (Alberta Watson) who is stuck in bed with a leg injury. With his father away on business and having lost both his job and his girlfriend, Raymond takes comfort in his mother...which leads to them embarking on an incestuous relationship. Though the film does moralise its central predicament in a rather safe and acceptable way, there are so few films that dare to broach the subject, let alone any that do so in such an upfront, matter-of-fact manner. The film makes it clear that the mother seduces the son, though the psychological machinations of her mental state are left ambiguous and for us to dissect.