TRAILER
Cooper Hoffman as a sex toy
This is a new twist for Gregg Araki, and he's taking a new look at things. Araki's The Living End and other nineties films "rode a cultural wave of Queer cinema" (as critics still say) that was provocative, delightful, and sui generis. His films were doom-ridden yet joyful. He seemed to find the hopelessness of the threat of AIDS liberating, if he needed anything for that. The adorable James Duval served as his primary muse, leading man, and recurrent "pet boy" archetype throughout his 1990s films. Duval made angst-ridden, wide-eyed helplessness and bisexuality adorable, and a signature style.
Well, now he has Cooper Hoffman. And Hoffman, youthful, blowsy, fresh, straight, and very at home on the screen, becomes in Araki's new film a sex toy for a heterosexual, rapacious dom mom played by Olivia Wilde. In doing this, Araki may be making fun of his own former preoccupation with a sexualized muse. (Olivia has been busy this year, but I fear she will be more remembered for The Invite), and maybe Behemoth, when that comes out later this year.) This one is Olivia de Cruel, shall we say. A woman who is as much of a top as Wilde's character, Erika Tracy, is really roaming more over into lesbian territory, but, whatever. Araki has ranged outside his humorous queer sensibility before, notably in the stunning Mysterious Skin and the stoner comedy Smiley Face. In this new effort, I Want Your Sex the queerness arrives in a female mask.
Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) lands a job for a powerhouse lady, the hotshot artist Erika Tracy as her "assistant", i.e., sexual muse. He is already in love with her, so he is amazed and delighted when he is picked from a crowd of applicants, and Elliot welcomes being used in any fashion Erika chooses. The more she pushes him around and manipulates him. the better he likes it. Hoffman is game in this eager role and for a while this somewhat novel theme is fun.
Despite the panoply of provocative outfits worn in every scene by Wilde, there is less explicitness about the sex in this than most of Araki's previous films, notably his Teen Apocalypse trilogy, which are gay-oriented, even less sexiness altogether. You can't help but think the sexuality is by the numbers here because Gregg is out of his real comfort zone. If queer has run dry for him then you must also wonder if his mother lode must be worn away, and what source he is consequently working from. On the other hand there is a gay undertone in this movie, and his bossy female Erika seems drawn from ideas of dominant lesbians, even though she's ostensibly straight.
I must echo Marshall Schaffer's review of this film in Slant earlier in the year when he notes Araki's office sexual affair (Erika hires Eliot to work in her artistic office) is "less incendiary" than in the ones in Secretary or Babygirl, Araki's S&M less kinky than that of Sanctuary or Pillion. You'd have to be bold and groundbreaking for a mainstream movie to equal these and that's not his aim. What is Araki working for? Is he running on empty a bit, going through the motions - motions this time in a sphere outside his comfort zone?
This is not to say I Want Your Sex isn't, at times anyway, breezy, mildly outrageous fun. Its older generation comment on zoomer sexual timidity is amusing and well taken. Araki can beat times as breezily nihilistic as he was in the 90s. When Erika is asked at one of her art openings by a dumb middle-aged gay couple what her work means she replies "Fuck if I know. It means money in my bank account. That's all I care about." AS crude as that is, it evokes the old devil-may-care Araki. And Cooper Hoffman, Olivia Wilde, and others in the cast such as Chase Sui Wonders as Eliot's hunky gay roommate Apple (the latter a clear nod to the old Araki) are well cast. Still, the old vibe isn't quite there this time. Will he get it back? Or will he do something stunning and important again, as he did with what some consider his masterpiece, the stunning 2004 Mysterious Skin?
I Want Your Sex, 90 mins., premiered at Sundance Jan. 23, 2026, showing at many local US fests, also Sydney and Melbourne, Edinburgh. US theatrical release by Magnolia July 31, 2026. Metacritic Rating: ̶6̶4̶%̶ Now 68%.
Nathan Lee reviewed this film along with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in Film comment.