Where the boys are

In Coppola's upcoming "The Virgin Suicides," Josh Hartnett gives an electric performance as Trip Fontaine, a teenage Adonis whose graceful swagger will tap into any woman's latent desire to seduce a 17-year-old. Coppola reportedly auditioned hundreds of young actors for the role, but with Hartnett she draws out a charisma and raw sexuality that can make you weak in the knees. This adoration of youth has existed for years in film. Watching Fontaine walk causes the same pang of guilty lust in women that Mena Suvari's character in "American Beauty" must elicit in men. But Coppola's scenes with Hartnett are a shrine to the fresh and vibrant carnality of teenage boys, a sort of reverse Lolita-ism. Eventually Fontaine becomes a catalyst for the film's central tragedy and his aura fades, but for one brief moment the seduction is complete.

In "Committed," Krueger has taken the age-old theme of a woman in love with a man who's afraid to commit and turned it into a comedic road movie. Luke Wilson plays a blinking and confused sensitive guy searching for his soul in all the wrong places. What he has forgotten -- in the midst of all this endearing self-absorption -- is his wife, played by Heather Graham. Graham's search for her husband is fueled by a blind optimism that would be annoying if it weren't for Wilson's inherent sweetness. The "nice guy" stereotype is in full form here and it's a role Wilson was made for. With his good-natured demeanor and puppy-dog face, he's an actor who can make even the most blatant selfishness seem somehow charming.

In "American Psycho," Harron directs a delicately boned, elegantly dressed Christian Bale as Bret Easton Ellis' coldhearted killer. Bale plays the part with bored and haughty bemusement, moving through the film like a smugly satisfied cat. "American Psycho" is not a film one might expect to be directed by a woman, but it is Harron's feminine touch -- and her humor -- that keeps the film's brutal elements palatable. In a satirical take on '80s excess, Bale's rich kid has a sense of entitlement as large as his ego -- yet there's something in his snobbery that is appealing. We can laugh at his cruelty because Harron has created an effective film stereotype: the privileged white Ivy Leaguer every viewer loves to hate.

In Peirce's haunting "Boys Don't Cry," the brutality of the film's "real" men is juxtaposed beautifully with the main character's self-constructed masculinity. Hilary Swank's "Brandon" seduces Chlok Sevigny's Lana by offering a balance of female vulnerability and male strength. The girls in the film love Brandon for this quality; the men despise him. The film's violence is fueled by the male characters, whose ignorance and insecurity in their own sexual power lead to a disturbing climax. But what makes the film truly explosive is the question it poses: Is what women really want in a man a woman?

One of the most beautiful films this year is Denis' "Beau Travail," a meditation on male sexuality that is as gorgeous and sublime as any movie made in the past decade. Set in the barren, black-rock plains of northern Africa, it takes as its essential focus the beauty of the male form, flawlessly composed in a series of shots of the main characters, a squadron of Foreign Legion soldiers. Throughout most of the movie, the sweat, blood and animal sexuality that make up the male mystique are reflected in the harshly beautiful landscape. The camera slowly pans over hot sands, twitching muscles and blue sea with equal relish.

Of all of these directors, it is Denis' fearless sexualization that perhaps best illustrates our perception of men. Her characters are a mixed batch, encompassing the whole gamut of male iconography: from Campion's brute, to Coppola's pretty boy, to Krueger's nice guy. But it's her unapologetic objectification of the male body that is most exciting of all.

The "eye," so long dominated by men, has slowly but surely been attained by female directors. And what does this reflection show us? How exactly do women perceive men? Do we see selfish brutes, softhearted fools, psycho killers? Do we worship, like men, the beauty of youth? Do we pay tribute, like the Greeks, to the thin graceful curves of the adolescent male body? Most likely, we do all of the above, with each of these elements contained in our assessment of the opposite sex -- the innocence, the cruelty and the helplessness combined.

But what's most refreshing is simply that female directors are beginning, at last, to explore the same themes their male counterparts have explored. It's our time to deconstruct the opposite sex, to manipulate male sexuality according to our own observations and whims. After too many years, it's finally our turn to objectify, sexualize, fear, worship, loathe, adore and, best of all, lust after.

• View blog reactions