I Want Your Sex
by George Wolf
Even when a Gregg Araki film does not work for me at all (hello, Kaboom), I’m interested in his next move. Whatever he’s up to, you can make a safe bet it will be audacious, horny and pretty damn fearless.
I Want Your Sex is all that and a bag of charming.
Cooper Hoffman is a damn delight as Elliot, an affable, mop-headed goofball who’s thrilled to get a job working for Neo-pop artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde, fantastically self-absorbed smoke show). Erika deals in frank sexuality, and waits a full week before giving her new assistant a no-nonsense, carnal proposition.
What’s Elliot to do? Yes, the studious Minerva (Charli XCX) is his girlfriend, but to her sex is an uninteresting chore, so….it’s DTF time!
Erika gets a new sexual muse, and Elliot gets to broaden his, ahem, horizons in various kinky ways. Though co-workers Vikktor and Zap (Daveed Diggs and Mason Gooding, respectively letter perfect) consistently roll their eyes at Elliot’s naïveté, he’s pretty okay with Erika’s benefits package.
That is, until there’s blood, a body, and two detectives (Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville) wanting answers.
Araki, who also co-writes with Karley Sciortino, crafts much of the film as a mystery told via shifting timelines. But each step in the Elliot/Erika relationship is so engaging you forget there are two cops ready to pop in with more questions. They can wait a hot minute, because Araki and company are having too much fun with this neon-colored tapestry of sexual mores, hipster sweat shops, Harold Robbins novels and penis rugs, all wrapped around frisky exclamations and hilariously droll asides.
Hoffman and Wilde are a down and dirty joy together, and their natural, committed chemistry gives the film a sweet, dare I say even sentimental layer I wasn’t expecting.
I was expecting the sexcapades, and all the usual Araki flourishes. But even while pushing all of these fetish boundaries, I Want Your Sex may be his most accessible film. And most thoroughly enjoyable.
