★★★ (3 out of 4)
Someone once asked Woody Allen if sex was funny. “It is,” he said,” if you’re doing it right.” That lesson works like gangbusters for director and cowriter Gregg Araki in “I Want Your Sex,” the indie filmmaker’s first film in 12 years. The renegade spirit of the mad creator behind the so-called Teen Apocalypse Trilogy of “Totally F***ed Up” (1993), “The Doom Generation” (1995) and “Nowhere” (1997), has been much missed. There’s a new profile of Araki in the New Yorker (how’s that for culture cred?) that shows that this son of Japanese parents is still swinging for the fences at 66 with this teasing, terrific art-world satire that starts by worrying that Gen Z isn’t having enough sex.
And how about that Olivia Wilde? After directing and costarring in “The Invite,” the summer’s hottest comedy for grownups, she stars here for Araki as a performance artist of sex called Erika Tracy. She makes a spectacular entrance floating lifelessly in a pool, like William Holden in “Sunset Boulevard.” Gloria Swanson put him there with a spray of bullets. Yes, folks, murder of the delicious film noir kind plays a part in this wicked whatsit that allows Wilde to swan around as Swanson, Barbra Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth and other femme fatale vixens. Wowzah!
Indeed. R-rated movie sex has kind of disappeared in modern cinema. Now it’s back with a smile on its face that won’t quit. Araki’s title alone is geared to scare away the prudes. That’s too bad. Because the film’s teasing attitude to the role playing that sex often is makes for a bracing wakeup call about how much fun it is to be fooled.
Wilde’s Erika doesn’t really want your sex. She wants to control it, shape it to her own needs. That’s power, baby. Enter her new personal assistant. His name is Elliot. He’s a 23-year-old UCLA graduate (title ref is intentional). And he’s played by Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza,” “The Long Walk”), the son of the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who shares his dad’s gift for locating the broken places in characters who are usually eager not be noticed.
Erika notices Elliot. Like a sculptor who’s just happen on a fresh supply of clay. His sweet smile is just begging to be corrupted. At least Erika thinks so. And Elliot can’t wait. Who is this guy? Araki and his co-screenwriter Karley Sciotino, of the website Slutever, don’t keep us guessing. He has a roommate and willing sounding board in Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) and enjoys begging for submissive sex with medical student Minerva (Brat diva Charli XCX) who gets off on turning him down.
As you might imagine, Erika is the answer to Elliot’s prayers. At least at the beginning. He works as her gofer in a studio filled with trust-fund brats (Mason Gooding, being the exemplar). Erika makes Elliot beg for everything as she denounces his generation as “a bunch of whiny, repressed weaklings.” What a turn on!
Gregg Araki’s screwball sex comedy is a true film of its time. You’ll laugh till it hurts.
Erika and Elliot are both pretending, of course. She yearns to be taken seriously in the art world and he longs to be taken seriously at anything. Wilde and Hoffman, both sensational, are a fine fun pair of opposites. So it’s an exuberant gift to see them on parallel lines that meet.
Hey, what about the murder? Oh that. Araki’s movie, not always as outrageous and naughty as it wants to be, is framed by scenes of two police detectives, played hilariously straight by Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho, interrogating Elliot. But don’t go into “I Want Your Sex” expecting a whodunit. Araki is too much the merry prankster for that. For him, sex is everything and nothing, which makes this screwball sex comedy a true film of its time. Get ready to laugh till it hurts.