The last Gregg Araki movie I watched was Mysterious Skin, so as you can imagine, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to experience an Araki movie again. I knew it would be good, but would it emotionally devastate me the way Mysterious Skin did? Lucky for me, I Want Your Sex is campy, sexy, messy – it’s absolute chaos with a buckload of chemistry between Wilde and Hoffman. While not everything coalesces, it’s insanely funny and a blast to experience in the theatre.
The movie begins with a man waking up in woman’s underwear to discover a woman floating in a swimming pool. Did she die? Is he responsible? How are they connected? Araki then takes us back in time to witness the beginning of Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) and Erika’s (Olivia Wilde) coupling. Erika is Elliot’s boss. She’s the owner of an art gallery, and her art revolves quite a fair bit around her sexuality. Elliot does whatever it is interns do when they work at an art gallery, like chewing gum for a vagina art piece. He’s immediately drawn to Erika – why wouldn’t he be? She’s hot and gorgeous and talented. Much to his surprise, she’s interested in him too, but only for sex and not anything else.
Wilde is absolutely fearless as Erika. She brings the physicality needed for the role, but it’s the moments when Erika drops the bravado to reveal the vulnerability beneath that makes her performance incredible. Wilde and Hoffman also have amazing chemistry – it’s palpable and they do a great job of showing us how attracted both Erika and Elliot are to each other. Hoffman is proving himself to be one of the better young actors of his generation. I saw him in The Long Walk last year and he was fantastic. Elliot’s like this hapless sod but in his hands he’s also kinda sexy and relatable, even when he’s crawling around in pink frilly underwear.
As Erika broadens Elliot’s sexual horizons, he finds himself wanting more with her – a proper relationship with all the bells and whistles. But Erika doesn’t function like that, the only real relationship she has is with her art. I Want Your Sex makes it clear that relationships can hurt you, but how else will you learn what you like and how to be intimate if you don’t let yourself find out? Elliot was stuck in a loveless, sexless relationship before he met Erika. She breathed colour and pleasure into his life, but she also trampled over his heart. Araki views this as an essential life experience.
I watched I Want Your Sex around the same time all the chatter around the sex purge movie was going on. In an interview, One Night Only director Will Gluck spoke about how people don’t like watching sex on screen – it’s discomforting and they avoid it. Araki’s film feels like an anti-thesis to all that; it’s loud, colourful, and sex-positive. It’s refreshing to see a movie boldly lean into its kinks without any moralising or a tidy domestic resolution. I just hope we don’t have to wait 12 years for another Gregg Araki film.
REVIEW SCORE: 3.5/5
