I Want Your Sex

Sad reality of now.

I Want Your Sex follows Elliot, a naive college graduate who lands a job as the assistant to Erika Tracy, a famous contemporary artist whose work revolves around eroticism. While he's completely over the moon, Erika makes it clear that getting hired was never the main reason she chose him. Elliot is also someone who could probably be described as a sex addict in the making — he spends most of his time lost in vivid fantasies, constantly coming up with scenarios in his own head, while his real relationship with his girlfriend feels distant at best. So when he's suddenly given the opportunity to test the limits of his own sexuality, he doesn't just dive in headfirst — he starts falling for the object of his fantasy, while Erika simply sees him as her newest toy.

At its core, I Want Your Sex is a brutal satire with some Fifty Shades of Grey flair if it completely embraced the joke. It's exaggerated, bizarre, and occasionally resembles an extended Saturday Night Live sketch or something straight out of Ryan Murphy's imagination. Yet underneath all that absurdity is a surprisingly smart film about the strange direction sex culture has taken for Gen Z.

If I had to describe Gen Z's relationship with sex today, I'd probably say it's either dead or radicalized, depending on the environment you're looking at. That's exactly the space Gregg Araki explores here. As Elliot becomes consumed by his fantasies, sex slowly stops being something he experiences and instead becomes his entire personality. The film treats it as an addiction, showing how obsession breeds emotional manipulation, damages friendships, destroys relationships, and ultimately makes someone lose themselves in their own fantasies while the other person knows exactly what they want and isn't afraid to exploit that with varying levels of shamelessness.

The film also deserves some credit for not taking itself too seriously. It isn't afraid to go full comic-book absurdity with its visual style, strange editing choices, and intentionally over-the-top sequences. Sometimes those stylistic decisions make the central idea feel a little buried beneath the parody, but the message never really disappears.

Also, I believe this might be the first movie with a Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce joke, so Swifties, consider yourselves warned.

A huge part of why the film works comes down to its two leads. Casting deserves a lot of credit here because Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde are perfectly matched for these roles. Wilde makes Erika effortlessly commanding, seductive, and intimidating, while Hoffman completely sells Elliot as an awkward, naive, slightly clueless young guy. He's genuinely adorable on screen, which makes the contrast between the two characters even funnier and far more compelling. Charli xcx is funny as Elliot's girlfriend. I can't really say the same about the rest of the supporting cast. Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, and Roxane Mesquida often feel less like actual movie characters and more like people wandering in from a sketch comedy show.

In the end, Gregg Araki delivers something genuinely unconventional and consistently entertaining. It may occasionally lose sight of its biggest ideas, but it never stops being fun to watch. Even during the moments when you don't particularly feel like thinking too hard about what it's trying to say, you're still left with a colourful, funny, incredibly sexual, and visually pleasing ride. And ending the film with Jessie Ware's "Free Yourself" is simply the cherry on top.

7/10

Thanks to Magnolia Pictures for the screener.