I Want Your Sex

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is captured under the spell of Erika (Olivia Wilde) in I Want Your Sex (Distributed by Magnolia Pictures)

In the movies, sex is almost always portrayed as being about love or lust. And it is usually shown as a basic urge between a man and a woman occupying traditional gender roles. Mainstream movies do not deal with sexuality head on. The kinky indie comedy I Want Your Sex, the first film in twelve years from provocateur Gregg Araki, has no interest in a simplistic sexual relationship.

It is about control. The allure of giving power over yourself to someone else and having someone else give power over themselves to you. It is about an agreement based on desire and dominance, with an older, experienced, boss taking advantage of a young, naïve, subordinate. The fact that the boss in this situation is a female in her late thirties and the subordinate is a male in his early twenties is certainly a change from how these couplings tend to be shown.

Araki doesn’t fully take his audience behind closed doors with them; we get glimpses, just enough so what they are engaged in is clear. This is rated R, so Araki doesn’t push things too far into the literal. What he’s interested in isn’t physical, anyway. It is mental. The power she has to get him to do whatever she wants, merely by suggesting it and the obsession he develops with the thrill of doing what she demands. It is kind of shaped like a romantic comedy, though it definitely is not romantic. It sits at the cross-section of abuse and pleasure. It is an amusing story with some structural issues and an unsatisfying conclusion. But it is intriguing most of the way.

Elliot is a poor aspiring podcaster with a disinterested girlfriend. He stumbles into a job as an assistant at a gallery for controversial artist Erika Tracy. She is known for choosing young men to be her sex slaves and Elliot’s world is thrown into disarray when Erika sets her eyes on him.

Elliot gets ignored by his girlfriend, Minerva (Charlie XCX)

The screenplay is playfully modeled after those erotic thrillers from the 90s. I Want Your Sex (88 minutes, plus outtakes during the end credits) opens with a bloody Elliot finding Erika’s naked body floating in her swimming pool. He then tells the entire story of his time with her to the two detectives on the case. That narrative device is annoying in the moment and becomes even more frustrating once Araki gets to his payoff. It doesn’t match the overall tone of the story, which is funny, with shades of darkness. It also contains a couple of plot holes.

However, the movie’s main focus, the relationship between Elliot and Erika and how it impacts their respective lives, works. Elliot is played by Cooper Hoffman as a nice enough guy who is completely aimless. He lives with his best friend, who pays most of the rent, and has a girlfriend who can barely be bothered to pretend she wants to be around him. When Erika gives him attention, it might be the first exciting thing that has ever happened to him. Though their connection is based on her dominating and humiliating him, it doesn’t take long before she is all he can think about. It is an awakening that may be positive or negative, but he is going to see through either way.

Elliot is intentionally dull; he is a blank canvas Erika is painting on. That is not the case with Olivia Wilde as Erika. She walks around like she owns every room she is in, spouting a sexual and artistic philosophy that she mostly uses to see what reaction she gets. Nobody pays attention to Elliot so, when Erika bluntly propositions him, it is a lightning bolt. His willingness to do anything for her turns them both on. Wilde is very good as a woman who projects total self-confidence, who is selling herself at all times. Does Elliot actually mean something to her? Or is he simply a conduit for her stress as she approaches a big show? No matter how cruel she is to him, Elliot is convinced it is the former.

I Want Your Sex is a mixture of concepts, with passion and desire leading the way. Gregg Araki gets a lot of mileage out of that, generating laughs out of an arrangement that appears tremendously one-sided, yet both parties seem to think is benefiting them. It is neither tender nor cynical; it portrays an unbalanced toxic relationship with humor, though it doesn’t dig deep enough to engage with the ramifications for poor Elliot. Still, as a shot at a generation Araki clearly sees as overly repressed, it is a good time.

3¼ out of 5

Cast:

Cooper Hoffman as Elliot

Olivia Wilde as Erika Tracy

Chase Sui Wonders as Apple

Charlie XCX as Minerva

Mason Gooding as Zap

Daveed Diggs as Vikktor

Directed by Gregg Araki

Written by Gregg Araki and Karley Sciortino