I Want Your Sex blasts into theaters on July 31.
By Elazar Abrahams
Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex is a good movie. There are parts of it that are quite pleasurable, and a lot of it that just feels like pointless provocation.
The premise is vintage Araki provocation: Elliot, played by a bumbling Cooper Hoffman, is a sexually inexperienced young man who gets a job working for Erika Tracy, a famous, boundary-pushing artist played by Olivia Wilde. Soon, Erika invites him to be her sexual muse, the sub to her dom. What starts as Elliot’s total fantasy soon turns into obsession, betrayal, and potential murder.
The best thing about the film, by far, is the two leads. Wilde and Hoffman are both excellent here, and in ways we have not really seen from either of them before. Hoffman, granted, is still early in his career, but after Licorice Pizza and now this, it’s clear he has real chops. He has a likable, slightly awkward screen presence that makes Elliot feel naive without turning him into a total joke. You understand why he would be drawn into Erika’s orbit, and why he might not fully grasp what he is getting himself into until it’s too late.
Wilde is even better. Coming off The Invite, where she plays a much more emotionally boxed-in, unsatisfied married woman, her role here feels like a total reversal. Erika is confident, endlessly erotic, and completely in control. Wilde sells the character’s magnetism, which is essential, because the entire movie depends on believing that Elliot would follow this woman basically anywhere.
Together, they’re dynamite. A lot of I Want Your Sex is intentionally wacky and heightened, but the two leads give it a reliable center.
Those familiar with Araki’s work will know that this is not him at his most wild. He directed Smiley Face, the 2007 Anna Faris stoner comedy, and has made plenty of films more aggressively stylized than this. There are moments in I Want Your Sex where you can feel that energy poke through: the brightly filtered colors, the cartoon breasts and eyes that sometimes appear, the refusal to be embarrassed by outrageousness. But honestly, I almost wished the whole movie went further in that direction. It is boundary-pushing in its conversations and sexual subject matter, but visually and tonally, it sometimes feels caught between wanting to be a sleek erotic thriller, a Gen Z satire, and a wackier fever dream.
That unevenness is where the movie loses me a bit. When the stylized flourishes arrive, they can feel jarring rather than fully integrated. It’s as if the film keeps flirting with going completely off the deep end, then pulls back just enough to make the wild moments feel stranger in the wrong way. For a movie this explicit, I’m not sure it always commits to the full madness of its own premise.
Still, there is a lot here that’s interesting. Early in the movie, someone is watching an art film with nudity, and another character asks what the difference is between that and porn. It’s a great self-aware joke, because Araki is obviously poking at the exact conversation his own movie is inviting. What makes sex art? What makes it exploitation? What makes it liberating? What makes it cringe? And who gets to decide?
The movie also does have something to say about Gen Z and sex, even if it muddies its waters towards the end. It clearly sees a younger generation that is more fluent in the language of consent and power, but also more anxious, more judgment-ready, and maybe less sexually free than it imagines itself to be. But then Erika’s behavior escalates in ways that complicate the whole thing. If she becomes genuinely insane and inappropriate, are we supposed to dismiss the points she was making earlier? Is the movie critiquing her, defending her, using her as a cautionary tale, or all of the above? There is no clean answer. Perhaps that’s intentional, or like the fornication depicted in the movie, maybe it’s just messy.
The supporting cast deserves a shoutout, with Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Charli XCX, Johnny Knoxville, and Margaret Cho all popping up. Gooding, Charli, and Wonders are the standouts, each delivering very memorable and out-of-their-comfort-zone performances.
A movie titled I Want Your Sex was never going to be for everyone. It’s an awkward flick for sure, with a lot to love, and a lot to shrug. The pieces of something even more fun are present here, but it can’t quite get to completion.
I give I Want Your Sex a B.
