Twenty-three-year-old Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) becomes a sexual muse for his older provocateur boss Erika (Olivia Wilde).
Gregg Araki’s first film in over a decade opens with chaos: a naked female body facedown in a pool and a terrified male onlooker in pink lingerie, nose bloodied. Sex and shock are on a par with oxygen in the cult filmmaker’s oeuvre — his ‘Teenage Apocalypse’ trilogy features suicide, the forcefeeding of a severed appendage and an abundance of boundary-crushing fornication. In 2026, however, the teens ain’t what they were, and Araki and his co-writer, sex journalist Karley Sciortino, have mined Gen Z’s tangled relationship with pleasure for their BDSM two-hander.
Taking the role of dom is Olivia Wilde’s Erika Tracy, a strikingly assembled artist-turned-floating-body. She hires Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), an aimless soul 14 years her junior, as an assistant. Told through flashbacks, with Elliot as a witness speaking to detectives Zola and Zem (Maggie Cho and Johnny Knoxville), we learn that a week into the job, Erika invites him to enter into a sexual relationship with her. Partly for her art, also for fun; the motivations aren’t dwelled upon, as Elliot’s hungry eyes can barely stay in his skull.
A rallying cry for the young, insecure and horny.
A kaleidoscope of coitus ensues, more screwball than sensationalist. Elliot crawls on the floor upon Erika’s command and splays out blindfolded, thirstily awaiting her touch. In no time he’s intoxicated, his tantalising second life a tonic compared to his modest houseshare and uninterested girlfriend Minerva (Charli xcx, an eye-roll in human form). He bears all the surface traits of a modern, liberal young man: a “Forever Feminist” laptop sticker, a shabbiness that feels part-accidental, part-curated. Yet Hoffman makes him an open book: earnest, charming, and easy for even the icy Erika to warm to. In a sweet, stolen moment, Wilde slides her thumb into Hoffman’s mouth while he sits on her lap, her fingers gently stroking his beard.
Erika is assigned little backstory but Wilde knows when to give a little more and when to take even more away. What few personal breadcrumbs Erika dispenses Elliot devours, hoping the trail will lead to a steady relationship. It’s predictable yet understandable: on his podcast he describes his generation’s “conflicted and confusing” feelings about sex, amplified by the pandemic. Erika is all answers in a world of overwhelming questions (Elliot even has “Yes?” and “No?” tattooed above his knuckles). I Want Your Sex, alas, is hung up on the questions. The mystery of the opening scene drives the story towards a spirited but ambiguous conclusion, instead of burrowing further down the kinky rabbit hole. Yet a somewhat stilted end to the dynamic doesn’t undo the fizz and thrills that have come before.
A rallying cry for the young, insecure and horny that doesn’t reach a wholly satisfying climax. But, bolstered by a magnetic Cooper Hoffman, this still has plenty of bang for your buck.
