I don't know how much I can agree with you or not on this one, Jeff. I think we both agree that Summer of '42 handled the bedroom scenes pretty nicely - suggesting what was going on without showing everything that was going on.

Whether the film's story teeters on showing illegal sexual conduct is really a matter of personal taste and interpretation. I'm definitely not a let-it-all-hang-out liberal who thinks everything humans do should be depicted on the big or even the little screen, but Summer of '42 is not a salacious older-woman-seduces-boy film or a smirking horny teens in heat sort of thing. Yes, the boys in the film (Hermie, Oscy, and Benjie) do behave like teens and pre-teens with their talk about girls and sex, but there are also little subtexts, such as first love, the cost of war (Dorothy, the woman at the heart of the story, goes to bed with the younger man mostly in a state of shock after she gets The Telegram telling her that her husband was killed in action), and there is no celebratory mood afterwards.

Most popular films have a tendency to display illegal acts, most of them involving violence. Bank caper films more often than not glorify bank robbers (see Bonnie and Clyde) and try to justify their actions even as the director and writers try to mollify the viewers by giving the characters their just deserts.

Now, I'm not saying that every movie that shows sex between an older person and someone who's not of the age of consent (which varies from state to state) is acceptable, especially if the actors involved are really underaged. In fact, Summer of '42 is perhaps the only one of this genre which I'd recommend. But if we were to release movies based solely on what's legal in the U.S., we'd have such a tiny amount of movies.....