Cult indie filmmaker Gregg Araki returned to cinemas this summer with I Want Your Sex, a dark-comedy/drama starring Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman on opposite sides of an increasingly unhinged sexual relationship.
Hired as an assistant/errand boy for professional artist Erika Tracey (Wilde), Elliot (Hoffman) falls fast and hard for his new boss, who has her own designs on the young lead. Inexperienced and starstruck, Elliot is quickly groomed into an intense and life-changing BDSM dynamic, entirely upending his career and relationships.
Given such subject matter as grooming, sexual exploitation, and rape, it confounds that the movie’s biggest failing is its restraint in exploring and portraying the chaos and cruelty of such a dynamic. Even if it were not directed and co-written by an artist known to court controversy with his unashamed embrace of sexuality and taboo, the untapped darkness of I Want Your Sex is sorely missed potential.
While there are certainly moments of true bitterness and cruelty (the film’s climax certainly hits on genuine manic depravity), the film hardly pushes any boundaries beyond what you could expect from a Netflix original.
A big part of what makes this such a sticking point critically, is that purity culture and regressive views around sexuality are key points of discussion within the film. The bizarre conservative sexual mores of teenagers and young adults is ripe for satire and criticism, and writers Araki and (Karley) Sciortino clearly recognize this, so what’s going on here?
Per a piece written by Sciortino for Vogue, there is a high degree of studio discomfort hampering the exploration of such topics: “Gregg and I spent years trying to get it made (i.e. taking infinity [sic] meetings with people who loved the story but didn’t want to give us money)”. Unfortunately, these attitudes are neither new nor likely to go anywhere soon, given the evergreen safe bet for audiences of cartoons, hawkish propaganda, and respect-your-dad movies.
The dialogue shared between the film’s characters stumbles early on, especially noticeable in one scene between Wilde and Hoffman’s leads wherein they hurl op-ed columns at one another. As the film moves out of its first act, however, this issue is quickly resolved, giving way to dialogue which is subversively funny and sincere.
The film is perhaps carried by its performances, as Wilde and Hoffman turn in excellent work as the film’s leads. Hoffman is genuine as the naïve and uninitiated submissive to Wilde’s dominant, whose detached and teasing demeanor masks a scorned and sublimated cruelty.
While Mason Gooding and Chase Sui Wonders play well as the too-cool coworker and comic-relief roommate, the supporting cast is weighed down by the confounding casting of Charli XCX as Elliot’s pre-occupied girlfriend.
Beyond her lack of commitment to an American accent, to which nobody would care had she kept her native English, the singer’s total vacancy of talent and effort drags each of her scenes with Elliot to a halt. The end product is that it is hard to care about the subplot between the two, and it’s a relief that the film spends relatively little time with the character.
Second place to the performances is the film’s audio-visual direction. The makeup, costuming, and set design excellently lampoon the adult-daycare nature of self-important artists. The works of art produced for the film are well observed; appropriately hack, stupid, and infantile.
The film’s soundtrack is an excellent update to Araki’s usual style, with the typical shoegaze and punk rock outshined here by a well-curated selection of electronic and club-mixed tracks. Róisín Murphy’s Something More (Dirty) is an especial highlight.
I Want Your Sex is a bit of a messy movie, and not clearly intentionally so. While the subject matter could do with a darker, more confrontational character, the lead performances and direction are nigh-unimpeachable.
As a return to craft for the director, his first feature film in twelve years, I Want Your Sex holds, for the most part, a pretty keen grasp on the moment, a film which will hopefully be proven a rusty misstep in Araki’s catalogue.