I Want Your Sex – Film Review
by Fran Winston

Directed by: Gregg Araki
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Johnny Knoxville, Margaret Cho, Roxane Mesquida, Charli XCX and Daveed Diggs.

In cinemas August 28

Olivia Wilde is having quite the moment. After directing and starring in the hugely acclaimed The Invite, she resists the temptation to double duty here, leaving directing duties to Gregg Araki, who has something of a cult following thanks to his 90s offerings dubbed the “Teenage Apocalypse trilogy”.

This leaves her free to focus on playing contemporary artist Erika Tracy, who specialises in avant-garde, sexually explicit artwork. Her body is seen floating in a pool at the beginning of the movie, in a nod to the famous opening scene of Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard.

Much like that legendary flick, the story is told mainly in flashback, taking us back nine and a half weeks, when she embarks on a BDSM relationship with her 23-year-old assistant Elliot, played by Cooper Hoffman. The timeframe itself is a playful nod to the 1986 erotic drama 9½ Weeks.

Elliot’s girlfriend Minerva, played by Charli XCX, is largely uninterested in sex, leaving him vulnerable to Erika’s advances. She takes him down a rabbit hole of sexual experimentation and awakening until the lines between their personal and professional lives begin to blur when she uses videos of their encounters in her exhibition!

While the subject matter may sound titillating, the quirky manner in which Araki handles it ensures it never slips into sleazy territory. This includes drawing on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with surreal animated gags and characters rendered with exaggerated, Jessica Rabbit-style proportions to mirror the heightened, hyper-sexualised fantasies of the characters.

In the hands of a less assured leading actress, this could have failed miserably, but Wilde’s well-balanced portrayal of the complex Erika keeps it engaging for all the right reasons.

Inevitably, the power imbalance at the heart of the relationship will invite comparisons with Nicole Kidman’s 2024 erotic thriller Babygirl. But despite the abundance of kinky content, this is much more of a bawdy dramedy: lighter, less dark and far more playful than Kidman’s offering.
Quirky, fun and extremely engaging, this is the sort of film that will have audiences talking for all the right reasons.