Now Playing
Ju Dou
TOMORROW · APR 14
Ju Dou
🇨🇳 ChineseDir: Zhang Yimou1990 · 4K DCP
Gong Li as a young bride sold to an impotent dye-mill owner who takes his nephew as her secret lover. Crimson silks, steam, forbidden desire — banned in China for years.
📍 Metrograph · Tue Apr 14 8:00pm, Mon Apr 20 7:00pm
This Week — Apr 17–19
The Double Life of Veronique
APR 17, 18, 25
The Double Life of Véronique
🇫🇷/🇵🇱 French/PolishDir: Krzysztof Kieślowski1991 · 4K DCP
Irène Jacob plays dual roles — two women connected by a mysterious bond. Deeply sensual, almost mystical. Her luminous physicality is central. Q&A with Irène Jacob on Apr 25.
📍 Metrograph · Apr 17 4:15pm, Apr 18 7:50pm, Apr 25 7:45pm (Q&A)
Naked Came the Stranger
APR 18
Naked Came the Stranger
Dir: Radley Metzger1975
Based on the famous literary hoax novel. A radio host's wife seduces various men to get revenge on her cheating husband. Metzger's most playful erotic satire. Newly restored DCP.
📍 Metrograph · Sat Apr 18 10:15pm
A Short Film About Love
APR 19
A Short Film About Love
🇵🇱 PolishDir: Krzysztof Kieślowski1988
A 19-year-old postal clerk obsessively watches his beautiful neighbor through a telescope. Voyeurism, longing, and the raw vulnerability of desire. Expanded from Dekalog VI.
📍 Metrograph · Sun Apr 19 5:10pm
The Emperor and the Assassin
APR 18 · 35mm
The Emperor and the Assassin
🇨🇳 ChineseDir: Chen Kaige1998 · 162 min
Chen Kaige's lavish Qin-dynasty epic. Gong Li plays Lady Zhao, imperial lover sent on a doomed seduction mission to recruit an assassin. Court intrigue, forbidden romance, sweeping battles. Part of Metrograph's Gong Li retrospective.
📍 Metrograph · Sat Apr 18 2:00pm — 35mm print
The Hand
APR 19
The Hand
🇭🇰 Hong KongDir: Wong Kar-wai2004 · 56 min
Wong Kar-wai's segment from Eros, in its standalone extended cut. Gong Li as a high-end Hong Kong courtesan who teaches a young tailor (Chang Chen) about desire — fingers, silk, the cut of cloth against skin. Arguably Wong's most nakedly erotic film.
📍 Metrograph · Sun Apr 19 4:30pm
Apr 21 – May 1
In the Mood for Love
APR 22 · MAY 2, 7
In the Mood for Love
🇭🇰 Hong KongDir: Wong Kar-wai2000 · 4K DCP
Two neighbors (Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung) discover their spouses are having an affair and form their own achingly restrained, unconsummated intimacy in 1962 Hong Kong. Peak erotics-of-restraint cinema.
📍 Metrograph · Wed Apr 22 4:30pm
📍 Film at Lincoln Center (Tony Leung retro) · Sat May 2 6:00pm, Thu May 7 9:00pm
Fellini's Casanova
APR 21, 24, 30
Fellini's Casanova
🇮🇹 ItalianDir: Federico Fellini1976 · 35mm
Donald Sutherland as an existentially exhausted Casanova drifting through Fellini's theatrical pageant of decadent 18th-century eros. Lavish, dreamlike, lonely.
📍 Anthology Film Archives · Apr 21 7:15pm, Apr 24 7:00pm, Apr 30 7:15pm
No Other Choice
APR 23 · NEW
No Other Choice
🇰🇷 KoreanDir: Park Chan-wook2025
New Park Chan-wook. A laid-off corporate worker resorts to murderous extremes — carrying the director's signature perverse, stylized sensuality even when the genre is dark comedy.
📍 Metrograph · Thu Apr 23 10:10pm
Morte Cucina
APR 23 – MAY 3
Morte Cucina
🇹🇭 ThaiDir: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang2025
A young female chef encounters her abuser and lures him into an affair through her mastery of Thai cuisine. Erotic revenge thriller shot by Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai's DP). Stars Tadanobu Asano.
📍 Museum of the Moving Image · First Look Festival (Apr 23 – May 3)
The Image
APR 24 · MAY 1
The Image
Dir: Radley Metzger1975
A writer in Paris is drawn into a dom/sub triangle by a mysterious woman and her young "slave." Adapted from the pseudonymous novel by Catherine Robbe-Grillet. Metzger's most artistically ambitious erotic film.
📍 Metrograph · Fri Apr 24 9:30pm, Fri May 1 11:00pm
The Seduction of Mimi
APR 24–30
The Seduction of Mimi
🇮🇹 ItalianDir: Lina Wertmüller1972 · 4K
A Sicilian laborer's comically catastrophic quest for erotic vengeance on the man who slept with his wife. Wertmüller's bawdy, earthy sex-politics farce. New 4K restoration.
📍 Film Forum · Apr 24–30
Decision to Leave
APR 26 · MAY 1 · NEW
Decision to Leave
🇰🇷 KoreanDir: Park Chan-wook2022 · 35mm
A homicide detective becomes dangerously enthralled by the widow he's investigating. A hypnotic, fully-clothed erotic thriller — desire as surveillance. Park Chan-wook's most restrained and most romantic film.
📍 Metrograph · Sun Apr 26 9:15pm, Fri May 1 1:30pm
Maraschino Cherry
APR 25
Maraschino Cherry
Dir: Radley Metzger1977
A Manhattan madame training her younger sister in the trade. Metzger's last and most ornate hardcore — all velvet, chandeliers, and signature class. Part of the Rialto Report retrospective.
📍 Metrograph · Sat Apr 25 10:30pm
Suzhou River
MAY 1 · NEW
Suzhou River
🇨🇳 ChineseDir: Lou Ye2000
A Shanghai videographer narrates the obsessive story of a motorcycle courier searching for his lost lover — who may now be a mermaid-costumed bar dancer. Melancholic, sensuous noir-romance.
📍 Metrograph · Fri May 1 9:10pm
Tony Leung Retrospective · Apr 29 – May 7 · Film at Lincoln Center
Flowers of Shanghai
MAY 1, 5
Flowers of Shanghai
🇹🇼/🇯🇵 TaiwaneseDir: Hou Hsiao-hsien1998 · 4K
Inside the lantern-lit brothels of 1890s Shanghai, courtesans and their patrons (Tony Leung) negotiate jealousy, contracts and slow-burning desire in long opium-haze takes. Hypnotic, achingly sensuous.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Fri May 1 6:00pm, Tue May 5 12:30pm
2046
MAY 2, 5
2046
🇭🇰 Hong KongDir: Wong Kar-wai2004 · 35mm
Tony Leung's Chow Mo-wan drifts through charged affairs (Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong) while writing an erotic sci-fi novel. Continuation of In the Mood for Love's themes — dense with desire, smoke, and regret.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Sat May 2 8:45pm, Tue May 5 3:00pm
Lust, Caution
APR 29 · MAY 4
Lust, Caution
🇨🇳/🇹🇼 ChineseDir: Ang Lee2007 · 35mm
A young resistance agent in WWII Shanghai seduces and plots to assassinate a ruthless collaborator (Tony Leung). NC-17 sex scenes among the most explicit in any prestige film. Venice Golden Lion winner.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Wed Apr 29 12:30pm, Mon May 4 6:00pm
The Grandmaster
MAY 5, 7 · NEW
The Grandmaster
🇭🇰 Hong KongDir: Wong Kar-wai2013 · HK Cut
Ip Man (Tony Leung) and Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi) share one of the most erotically charged non-touches in 21st century cinema — a kung fu film that is secretly a romance of thwarted desire.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Tue May 5 9:00pm, Thu May 7 2:30pm
Cyclo
APR 29 · MAY 1 · NEW
Cyclo
🇻🇳 VietnameseDir: Tran Anh Hung1995
A Saigon cyclo driver falls into a crime gang run by a silent, brooding poet-pimp (Tony Leung) who grooms the driver's sister for sex work. Fever-dream eroticism. Venice Golden Lion winner.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Wed Apr 29 3:45pm, Fri May 1 8:30pm
Chungking Express
APR 29 · MAY 7
Chungking Express
🇭🇰 Hong KongDir: Wong Kar-wai1994
Two lovelorn Hong Kong cops (Tony Leung + Takeshi Kaneshiro) and the mysterious women who orbit them. More sensual than explicit — Faye Wong's stalkery romance with Leung is pure longing.
📍 Film at Lincoln Center · Wed Apr 29 6:30pm, Thu May 7 12:15pm