Lust, Caution (2007) was Cantonese director Ang Lee's follow up to the massively popular Brokeback Mountain, and this 1930s-set espionage thriller clocked in at a bum-numbing 2hrs 37minutes. A fair portion of this was plot, dialogue and drama, so Lust, Caution can't (ahem) go down as porn, but the ambiguous assertions of its stars (and director) as to whether the graphic sex scenes were simulated or not gives this huge porn kudos. Art, but only just.

Import/Export (2008) follows the parallel lives of a Ukrainian nurse and an unemployed Austrian security guard as they switch countries for a grass-is-never-greener exercise in futility and despair. It's a square peg for either art or porn hole though. Too difficult to watch to be art, it is more cinéma vérité than anything else, though certainly some of the content applies to the seedier edges of porn. Not mainstream art, not mainstream porn, just dark.

Standards have changed and the goalposts have moved, without a doubt for the better, and extended graphics sex scenes in mainstream cinema are no longer such a big deal. But the overall context of films still largely decide what gets left on the top shelf in your DVD store and what gets elevated to the top shelf of great film-making. But if you’re girlfriend’s asking, always remember that it’s definitely art.

Watch the In The Realm Of The Senses trailer here