I Want Your Sex

by Mike McGranaghan

Gregg Araki made a name for himself during the independent film boom of the 1990s. His movies, like Nowhere and Totally F***ed Up, were designed to provoke viewers, pushing the boundaries of sex and violence onscreen. I still remember the sense of revulsion I felt after watching a man have his penis cut off with garden shears, then shoved into his mouth in 1995’s The Doom Generation. Araki hasn’t made a picture in twelve years. How can today’s audiences, which internet culture has made more jaded, possibly be shocked?

The answer arrives in I Want Your Sex, a brazen comedy about dominant/submissive relationships. Sociological studies have shown that Gen Z wants less sexuality in film and TV. They’ll have a conniption if they see this.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is a somewhat aimless young man who lands a job working for provocateur artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). His mundane tasks include chewing sticks of gum to affix to her latest project, a portrait of a vagina. Elliot’s luck changes when Erika calls him into her office and offers to have sex with him. This begins a torrid fling where she subjects him to a series of increasingly wild sexual adventures. She makes Christian Grey look like an amateur. The situation grows sticky when he breaks their agreement not to bring emotions into the mix.

You’ve got to give Hoffman and Wilde credit for fearlessness. I Want Your Sex finds her frequently nude and him wearing a wig, lipstick, and women’s underwear. A scene where she introduces him to – how do I put this nicely? – backdoor pleasure is equally crazy. Most of this is played for laughs, staged in an exaggerated manner that makes it clear both characters are very much enjoying each other. Araki is playing with the notion of taboo, showing how a relatively innocent guy learns to love having his boundaries expanded.

Aside from the comedy, the movie presents a pretty interesting look at dominant/submissive dynamics. Erika gets off on ordering Elliot around; he gets off on being told what to do by a hot woman. Although the approach is comedic, you get a sense of what people in such relationships derive from them. The Fifty Shades trilogy felt slightly icky to me because the Anastasia character was often slightly afraid of what Christian was asking her to do. Here, Elliot is a gleeful participant, which gives the edgy material a fun, playful vibe.

Much of the picture relies on that Hoffman/Wilde chemistry. They’re funny together, obviously having a good time doing stuff that continually becomes more outrageous. Araki’s style is intentionally in-your-face, a style that the leads wholeheartedly embrace. The likeable supporting cast includes Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho as police detectives, Daveed Diggs as Erika’s assistant, and Chase Sui Wonders as Elliot’s best friend Apple, who gets hilariously dragged into a potential threesome in a particularly memorable scene.

Movies explicitly about sex tend to fall within a few basic categories: explorational dramas (Carnal Knowledge, Last Tango in Paris), erotic thrillers (Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction), or dopey teen comedies (Porky’s, et al.). I Want Your Sex is different, in that it portrays sex as fun, euphoric, and exciting. Araki and co-writer Karley Sciortino can’t quite devise a satisfying ending, but even that doesn’t stop the movie from being a hot, horny blast.