Written by Karley Sciortino and Gregg Araki
Directed by Gregg Araki
Where & When: AMC The Americana at Brand 18, Glendale, CA. July 31, 2026 4:30 PM
After he completed college with studies in cinematic arts, LA native, Gregg Araki was ready to tackle a career as a filmmaker. Pulling together about five thousand dollars, Araki made his feature film debut in 1987, "Three Bewildered People in the Night", a black & white drama involving a straight couple and their gay, male friend. Winning a Critics' Prize at the
Locarno International Film Festival for this film, Araki collected some more money to make his next low-budget feature two years later, "The Long Weekend (O' Despair)" which featured a gay, lesbian and straight couple all spending a weekend together, winning an award from
the LA Film Critics Association.
Araki's next movie would arrive in 1992 with a slightly larger budget and a premiere at
the Sundance Film Festival. Lazily described by some as a "
gay Thelma & Louise", "The Living End" is a road-trip adventure involving two HIV-positive male lovers on the run after stealing and leaving a trail of dead bodies. Boldly political, disturbingly violent and driven by a post-punk soundtrack, "The Living End" became a critical and box-office success while also one of the early films that helped spark the
New Queer Cinema movement which had included other provocative films by Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien and Derek Jarman. Araki would go on to make more, challenging cinema like his
Teenage Apocalypse trilogy: "Totally F***ed Up", "The Doom Generation" and "Nowhere", "Mysterious Skin" and the stoner comedy, "Smiley Face". But following "White Bird in a Blizzard", his little seen 2014 adaptation of Laura Kasischke's novel that featured an all-star cast, Araki has been missing from movie screens.
That has now been rectified with Araki's return to the big screen with "
I Want Your Sex", a colorfully stimulating, sex comedy that sees the director back in fine form. There's some BDSM kink tossed in along with erotic thrills, queer undertones and a possible murder which together creates an intriguingly twisted, dark edged farce.
When we first meet Elliott (Cooper Hoffman), bloodied and wearing lingerie, he sees a naked female body face down in a pool. This is his boss, Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a provocative visual artist and we are taken back several months ago when Elliott first went in to apply for a job as one of her studio assistants who help assemble her sexually charged art. Unfocused and a bit disheveled, he doesn't really seem like a good fit for this position yet Erika seems intrigued and hires Elliott on the spot.
But she has more nefarious plans for the young Elliott that is not exactly work related. After inquiring if he has a girlfriend (which he does, played by pop star,
Charli XCX, who is far more interested in studying than having sex with him), Erika promptly initiates a purely sexual relationship with him. Hesitant at first, Elliott soon gives in to his urges but he discovers that Erika has something more extreme in mind. She enjoys being dominant during their erotic encounters and guides Elliott into a deeply submissive position, pushing him to do things he never would have imagined.
Never motivated by commercial appeal or the potential of huge box-office, Araki hasn't changed much since his early days of guerilla filmmaking, continuing to make scrappy movies on his terms that are queer in spirit and style. He was inspired to make "I Want Your Sex" (working on the script with Karley Sciortino for about a decade) after learning that Gen Z was having less sex than previous generations. Shocked by this news, Araki set about to create this film less to be critical but more to provoke conversation about this subject. As Erika says to Elliott, "
Making a mistake is what being young is all about.", encouraging him to enjoy his youth by having bad love affairs, getting sloppy drunk or just being reckless. And trust me, there will be plenty of time later in life to be safe and cautious.
Much like his father, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, the twenty-three year old Hoffman displays an easy, natural screen presence with a performance filled with charm, nuance and depth. Since his debut as the lead in family friend, Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza", Hoffman has been giving nepo babies a good name while revealing the potential to have an promising career ahead of him.
Wilde is having a particularly good year. After the letdown of "Don't Worry, Darling", her second feature as a director, she recently received glowing raves for her direction and performance in the comedy-drama, "The Invite" and will appear as an actor in Tony Gilroy's upcoming drama, "Behemoth!" that will reach theaters in December. As Erika, Wilde is fearless, unconcerned about being likeable or appealing while perfectly capturing the wild, narcissistic nature of this overindulgent artist.
The rest of the impressive cast includes Chase Sui Wonders as Apple, Elliott's platonic roommate, getting drawn into the kinky games when Erika demands that he quickly find a third for a three-way. Daveed Diggs appears as the harried business manager who gracelessly informs Elliott, frustrated by his interruption of the work flow, that he's hardly the first of Erika's assistants she has spent time with after hours. Mason Gooding delivers the sass as Zap, Elliott's gay co-worker and Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho show-up, playing against type, as the hard-nosed detectives trying to get answers from Elliott on his relationship to Erica and what could have happened to her.
Kinky and uninhibited, "I Want Your Sex" might be power driven by unconventional carnal desires yet doesn't really have much of a honest erotic charge. And while the mystery at the heart of the film winds up being a bit too tidy and improbable to be satisfying, Araki is still able to keep his depraved version of a rom-com a hilariously enjoyable watch.
