by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Siu Wonders, Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville
Intro:
… from its gleefully cheeky perspective on sexuality, to its clinically insane yet perfect casting, to its delightfully demented sense of humour, is everything that makes Gregg Araki one of the best filmmakers of the doom generation.
Gregg Araki makes sex look like the most uncomplicated thing in the world. Part of that is down to his beautifully grounded approach to showing sexual relationships across the colour spectrum, giving a level of insight and genuine understanding of their realities and neuroses that has stayed more or less consistent since his debut nearly forty years ago with Three Bewildered People In The Night. But mostly, it’s because of his chaotic storytelling sensibilities, infusing his narratives with all manner of grindhouse carnage and conspiratorial post-apocalyptic moods.
Araki’s latest feature, breaking an over-decade-long drought after his dishearteningly subpar White Bird in a Blizzard, may be less fixated on the end of all things we know, but is especially focused on the ways people overcomplicate intimacy in modern society. Without the underpinnings of Y2K or the AIDS epidemic, the source of such strains isn’t as direct as his previous work (aside from some admittedly tasteful commentary on post-MeToo commerce), but it’s that straight-forward, generation-spanning grab that ultimately lets I Want Your Sex find its target in terms of championing true sexual liberation.
Between Olivia Wilde embodying TLC’s sophomore album as artist/dominatrix Erika, and Cooper Hoffman essentially doing his breakthrough Licorice Pizza May-December schtick again as assistant/submissive Elliot, the film is framed as an interrogation of Zillennial sexual hang-ups. At times literally, given the police framing device involving Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville (a casting choice that makes way too much sense if you remember him as sex Jesus in A Dirty Shame), but more thematically in the blossoming BDSM relationship between Erika and Elliot.
The script from Araki and Karley Sciortino is as irreverent about the nature of sex as it is about mainstream art culture, making for many a chuckle-worthy quip about artistic narcissism and how, much like sex, art itself tends to get overcomplicated when analysis takes precedent over its instinctive impact in the moment, which can take the fun out of things.
While its depiction of S&M leads to some thorny directions, like the increasingly-deranged trajectory of Erika/Elliot, even the more head-tilting moments lend themselves quite well to the film’s larger point about… well, just taking it easy about stuff like this. Live in the moment, however long (or short) it may be. The perspective Araki lends the story, with his come-up during the heyday of the U.S.’s disastrous handling of the AIDS epidemic, is mildly irked at seeing the next generation still dealing with the same old issues of attachment and self-imposed misery, but in more of a mentor role than anything envious or spiteful. He treats every moment, even Elliot’s frequent cartoonified breaks in reality, as a chance to pass on knowledge that was hard learned and let that next generation, hopefully, go about their love lives with less apprehension.
It follows the methodology behind his most vanilla feature Splendor, stripping away the extranormal trappings to focus directly on the myriad of reasons why tradition and the hetero orthodoxy should never take precedence over individual happiness. Because even when showcasing straight relationships, his core understanding of sex is emphatically Queer AF.
I Want Your Sex, from its gleefully cheeky perspective on sexuality, to its clinically insane yet perfect casting, to its delightfully demented sense of humour, is everything that makes Gregg Araki one of the best filmmakers of the doom generation. Even with its procedural tension, its vision and, in its own way, dominant tone when dropping knowledge on the next generation of sexually-active adults, is invigorating in its relaxed and carefree demeanour. It’s designed like a latex-gloved hand ushering the viewer into carnal salvation, and because it knows not to take itself too seriously, it stays fun while granting a viewpoint from which to find one’s own fun and claim it, without remorse or regret. Whether you find yourself wanting to be in Elliot’s shoes, or Erika’s, or even neither in lieu of something even more out-there, that want is simply human.
