The Scoop features personal essays on movie-related topics.
Growing up in a super conservative and religious household didn’t exactly prepare me to be a sexually educated heroine.
Between church every Sunday, movies vetted exclusively by Plugged In, and a lingering fear that any form of self-gratification might send me Hell-Bound, my early introductions to sex went about as far as some story involving a sandal-wearing religious figure with a suspiciously large number of wives, and sneaking over to my friend’s house to watch Bella and Edward’s deep vampiric yearning in Twilight.
As a result, my twenties have consisted of a lot of time unlearning (and probably overcorrecting) a lot of these insecurities. Especially alluring during this time: cinema with any form of enlightening sexual intimacy. Which is probably why my recent viewing of Gregg Araki’s new film, I Want Your Sex, feels like such a welcomed cinematic exorcism of my purity culture adolescence. A zesty forbidden fruit I was enthralled to take a bite of, Araki’s latest is a hilariously chaotic and unapologetic reminder that sexual intimacy doesn’t always need to be feared or overanalyzed, and can instead just be a messy, hell of a good time.
A hilarious, deviant mess
Following the spiraling relationship between a provocative contemporary artist named Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) and her awkward new assistant, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), I Want Your Sex is an entertaining duel between power, obsession, and intimacy in a way that definitely bends every HR rulebook imaginable. But that deviance is also exactly why I can’t look away from these two.
Spending 90 minutes under the intergalactic sexual aura that is I Want Your Sex, watching this super unhinged satire made me realize that while I was watching a really clever dark comedy unfold, at a deeper, more personal level, I was also watching a plot that refused to treat sex with the same solemnity I’d otherwise been taught. (Flashback to my parents skipping through sex scenes during family movie time…)
Instead, this movie stares directly at desire with a risqué, mischievous grin, embracing all of the playful contradictions that come with the territory without feeling the need to moralize them all too much. Even when intimacy in this world spirals into something as outrageous as a potential murder scene, I Want Your Sex insists that it’s still better to explore desire than hide behind it.
That ethos really comes alive through Wilde and Hoffman, who are both absolutely electric together on screen. With two wildly different perspectives on sex, their kinky Zillennial tension is made much more fascinating, and the neon-soaked set design—which practically oozes between the morality of these two very sexually complicated characters—helps illuminate their performances even more.
It is Wilde’s Erika, though, who really resonated with me in light of what I brought to the theater seat. When first getting to know Erika’s latex-draped character—swiveling in an office chair and asking her new assistant, Elliot, about his personal sexual experiences—her casual and unforgiving attitude towards sex immediately grabbed me, as someone raised in an environment where women were taught to be cautious of their bodies instead of even remotely aware of what they want. Erika might not be the best cinematic role model, as we learn later in the film, but watching a character like her be so confident in her sexuality—even though it is undoubtedly messy—made me appreciate the mess.
I Want Your Sex insists that it’s still better to explore desire than hide behind it.
Watching I Want Your Sex, my years of overthinking about intimacy felt like it was slowly dissolving beneath Wilde and Hoffman’s exotic chemistry on screen, with all of my anxiety-ridden ‘what ifs’ I had accumulated getting lost between Erika’s denial of consequence. Seemingly daring this subjective audience to just stop catastrophizing and get on her knees and fuck for god’s sake—a handsome deviance from my early conservative upbringing that felt weirdly enlightening, but also unserious fun.
Objectively speaking, this movie has no real undercurrents of religion (unless you view sex as a kind of religion). But subjectively, I couldn’t stop thinking about mine the entire time I was watching. Even if you don’t come into this film with a very religious upbringing, I Want Your Sex is nevertheless a heedless sexual ecstasy that’s perfectly playful, bizarre, and entertaining for a kinky date night watch.
But if you have spent a lot of years believing intimacy had to be something wrapped in guilt or plummeting gravity, Gregg Araki’s latest film also feels like permission to free yourself a bit. At least for those 90 minutes. It’s one of the most unexpectedly freeing movies I’ve seen recently, which is probably why my husband and I also, coincidentally, had amazing sex after I saw it.
