I Want Your Sex – Review

Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 30 minutes, Director – Gregg Araki

Early-twenties Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) gets a job working for acclaimed artist Erika Tracey (Olivia Wilde) in the build-up to her next installation, quickly becoming her sexual muse.

From the Sunset Boulevard-esque opening Gregg Araki and co-writer Karley Sciortino inverts that film and other notable references with a ferocity close to tearing them apart and reassembling the pieces in a bright fuchsia collage akin to those in the gallery of contemporary artist Erika Tracey (Olivia Wilde). Wilde is bold with equal heat in her performance as she sinks her teeth and nails into the scenery around her as the artist who quickly turns new employee, twenty-three-year-old Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) into her sexual muse.

Being unfulfilled by his girlfriend (Charli XCX), Elliot leaps with retriever-like enthusiasm into this BDSM relationship, with power and submission taking different views for both as Elliot’s relationships outside of that with Erika start to be drawn into the whirlpool – particularly best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), seamlessly shifting from awkward humour into a new kind of dramatic awkwardness and tension between the pair in one intimate scene.

The humour doesn’t come directly from the aspects of power at play, or the simple base of sex, there’s a mature and adult look at the ideas at play, with intentional subversion of some of them through the laughs throughout. And there are indeed a good handful of chuckles to be had, helped by the cast, including a solid supporting cast, which also includes Daveed Diggs (who’s always great to see crop up) as Erika’s assistant.

There are jabs at the contemporary art scene, and exploitation of sex, too. Erika almost relies on it for her art, is it making a statement of sexual freedom and empowerment, or is it more for shock factor or playing into a successful market? Regardless, Elliot has fallen into it and after getting over initial anxieties he’s more than happy to keep exploring, getting a thrill and attention that he doesn’t get from his distant girlfriend – XCX is amusingly blunt with her performance as the completely bored and uninvested Minerva.

Araki shoots with bursts of colour in the surroundings. There’s a slight garishness to the bright colours coming from the art scene depicted on screen. The boldness of the characters, or at least Wilde’s manipulative artist who appears to be playing the role of artist in each facet of her personal and public life. Wilde fully commits in one of the boldest performances of her career and her effort pays off, with Erika feeling like the opposite of her character in this year’s earlier The Invite. She bites into the scenery, as does Araki and Sciortino, with a ferocity that brings out absurdity and the growing relationship tensions and dramas that Elliot spirals into with a well-tracked tonal shift in the third act. I Want Your Sex grabs attention with its boldness and then raunchiness, without skirting around its main subject or giggling at the prospect of its own title.

An adult comedy that doesn’t lean into the standard adult = sex, I Want Your Sex is a bold film with a ferocious turn from Olivia Wilde who brings out the laughs of the art world satire and growing tension between relationships faced by Cooper Hoffman’s torn and exhilarated muse.