I Want Your Sex: Gregg Araki Takes a Playful Poke at Gen Z's Sexual Devolution
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B+
There is a lot of sex happening in the playful comedy I Want Your Sex. But that’s not all that’s going on there.
The screenplay is adapted and directed by indie film provocateur Gregg Araki. And as you'd expect from him, it’s provocative, silly, visually colourful and a lot of fun. It also makes some pretty canny observations about modern life, with musings about whether some of us are just bullshitting our way through.
It’s been just over a decade since Araki made a feature film—he’s been focusing on TV —and he has things to say.
Araki was intrigued by statistics that showed that Gen Z isn’t having nearly as much sex as previous generations and has other psycho-social problems—like difficulty with face to face interactions. And he has assembled a wonderful indie A-list cast to play this out.
The film centres on a good-natured, frustrated, sort of unmotivated Gen Z-er named Elliot, (Cooper Hoffman).
His girlfriend, Minerva (Charli XCX), on the other hand is very motivated. She’s in medical school, humourless, deadly serious, constantly studying and disinterested in sex. This is a problem for Elliot, who good naturedly accepts her bored dismissiveness, and spends more time with his equally insecure roommate, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders).
He ends up with what looks like a dream job, working for a famous modern artist, Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) as she prepares for her next major show.
Erika is beautiful, edgy, outrageous, and rich and successful enough to make her own rules. She’s a kind of cliché, tossing off the kinds of lines you’d imagine a rebellious artist would say about conventional attitudes to life and art.
She leaves the worrying to her business partner Vikktor (Daveed Diggs, fabulous in a smallish role. You can feel him rolling his eyes from across the room).
Elliot is attracted to her, and the good news for him is that she’s sexually predatory. So, when she asks him to upgrade his relationship with her from employee to sex partner – with him sub (submissive), to her dom — he doesn’t hesitate to sign an NDA and go from there. Erika is all about BDSM and that’s okay with Elliot, who is pretty sweet about it all. In fact, sweet is pretty much his default setting.
The film is set up in the form of a film noir that starts with what looks like a murder—a dead body floating in a pool—and Elliot being debriefed by two detectives (Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho). But the noir framing is mostly a conceit and a chance to add a little mystery, tension, a little twist and coda.
The cast is fabulous. Wilde has spent more time behind the camera recently. Her film The Invite, in which she directs and co-stars, is one of the hit films of the summer.
She goes full in on Erika, as a self-absorbed user, and gives her enough self-doubt to make a cliche character much more interesting, even giving her some depth. That becomes important as the film goes on
And Licorice Pizza’s Cooper Hoffman once again proves he’s one of the most interesting young actors out there. His Elliot is kind of spiritually invincible: a mix of naive, goofy, wonderful charm.
Araki has a lot of fun with all of this. The characters get off witty and observant lines as part of their regular conversation, as Araki winks at us and lays out a buffet of cultural cliches.
That means there are some things to think about when the movie is done, if you're so inclined. But nothing to overshadow the fun.
I Want Your Sex. Directed by Gregg Araki. Stars Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Daveed Digs, Charlie XCX, Chase Sui Wonders, Mason Gooding. In theatres July 31.