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I Want Your Sex is Bold and Outrageous, But has a few Kinks to Work Out

The vibe that underscores I Want Your Sex hasn’t really been seen in a while and it perhaps does require some context to really appreciate. In the 1990s, there arose a movement on the American indie scene that has come to be known as the New Queer Cinema -born out of a wave of LGBTQ filmmakers coming into their own in tandem with a gradually more common social visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ themes, culture, politics, and people. Some of the creatives to burst forth from this movement managed to break into the mainstream, like Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant. Others, like Gregg Araki, remained largely in the underground. Watching Araki’s early films it is easy to see why -he has a rambunctious sensibility, a very camp style of satire, and a cavalier attitude around sex. Hollywood wasn’t quite going to embrace his art.
And it still hasn’t, elder statesman of queer cinema though he has now become. He dialed back these proclivities on some of his later films (his last, White Bird in a Blizzard from 2014, is completely unrecognizable), but I Want Your Sex really does mark a return of his style, and it still feels a little bit radical, even if the substance can’t quite match that intention.
Araki introduces the movie right off the top as a conscious riff in some respects on Sunset Boulevard -beginning with a dead body in a pool and the story being told in flashback. The film follows Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), a struggling twenty-something who manages to get a job as an assistant at the contemporary art studio of transgressive artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). Elliot’s thoughts are constantly on sex, which he gets very little of from his apathetic and distracted grad student girlfriend Minerva (Charlie XCX). In lieu, he obsesses over and fantasizes about Erika. Soon, Erika initiates a sexual relationship with Elliot based around BDSM, which he partakes in through his lust for her, though it eventually spirals out of control.
As you might guess given the subject matter, this is a film that tests just how far its actors are willing to go in their performances. Wilde takes to it well, exuding confident sexual power, while Hoffman goes to some pretty wild and kinky places though does so with perseverance and intent. He truly takes on the spirit of that William Holden part from Sunset Boulevard, as well as just that general archetype of the man enslaved to his illicit sexual desire, as in something like Body Heat. Hoffman and Araki make it feel distinctly more modern though, as they tap into things like Elliot’s hinted-at porn addiction and his desperation for sexual attention and gratification.
The film also just has fun with its wider satire of BDSM and the art world. Erika’s frankness of expression is frequently absurd. She appears to Elliot and his friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) for a threesome in explicit dominatrix gear yet directs them in the same casual manner she would her staff. At one point she records audio of herself masturbating and speculates on turning that into an art piece, while her other works are fairly blunt in their symbolism of feminine sexuality. Erika is a character with issues and compulsions too -more dependent on Elliot’s desire for her than she lets on and fixated on one particular kind of sexual act with Elliot to the point it’s an open question if they ever actually have conventional intercourse. And all of this is snidely dismissed by a French colleague of hers, played by Roxane Mesquida, whom Elliot believes he is meant to be a plaything for, but who derides their hollow American attitude towards sex over genuine eroticism.
This part of Araki’s satire feels a little bit out of touch -the American sexual attitude of late, and especially for Elliot’s generation, seems to be much more repressed than voracious, something that does seem to be acknowledged when you look at the characters around Elliot and Erika. Also, when you look at just the movie itself in relation to the media landscape of the 2020s -it occupies a lonely space of oddball sexual openness. But then, Araki has always done that, and the fact it doesn't fully fit in with its time is in this case at least a feature -the classical narrative aesthetic employed is just as much a nifty throwback -and among several elements invested with camp appeal, including the casting of Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville as the cops interviewing Elliot and (later in the film) the zealous height of Wilde's performance.
And then there are the strong colours and lighting, the contrast of colour elements in various scenes (clothing, furniture, backdrops), moments of monochrome spaces, and vivid, multi-hued hot lighting -especially in scenes set in Erika's office. The visual language isn't so unnatural and surreal here as in Araki’s earlier movies, but it is still striking and communicates a certain exaggeration of the film’s reality.
Yet in spite of all these compelling traits, the movie does start to lose steam after a time. I think a part of it is because the narrative formula is so predictable, much as the cast perform well within it. In some regards it progresses in ways that are unintentionally unnatural. A couple examples being Elliot's confrontation with Minerva over the substance of their relationship and the breakdown of his friendship with Apple which is legitimately a really clumsy execution. And while Araki’s style is still a little outrageous, his bite is not. Whether there is much to the movie's commentary on kink culture, I couldn't say, but in spite of its overtures it says very little new about the pretentious art world (and Araki invites through that evocation a lot of attention to his own oeuvre) -and even less on cancel culture, which does come up at a late point. As stated, it is already a bit off-base on its sexual satire, which is the primary focus. It is clever and entertaining, but that is all rather thin by the end, which is again rather eccentric and memorable, though inconclusive by design. It is not as ironic a note as I think Araki intended.
I Want Your Sex has a lot going for it -in several ways it has a refreshingly punk air about it not found in a lot of movies now. It is a legitimate throwback to 90s queer camp -yet it is notable that only a few of its side characters are actually queer, and their sexuality is never foregrounded the way hetero-BDSM is. Hoffman and Wilde deliver very well, and beyond the aesthetics and pacing there is some fun in the allusions and small parts of the sarcastic script. Yet there is inescapably something missing in the execution, that is more than a little tedious and unfulfilled. It is a weird and modestly enjoyable movie tryst, but the climax is underwhelming.

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