I Want Your Sex, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is a wild, explicit comedy. It finds the humor in relatable social issues and specific sexual practices.
Elliot is dating Minerva (Charli XCX) who is so disinterested in sex that Erika opens his world. Director Gregg Araki uses animation and superimposed images to show Elliot's fantasies and emotional reactions.
Erika and Elliot's conversations about the pandemic generation's discomfort with sex make salient points on both sides. But, Erika dominates Elliot and introduces him to various submissive practices.
Screenwriters Araki and Karley Sciortino come up with lots of sexy twists for Erika to try on Elliot. Still, Elliot's biggest fantasy is talking about monogamy.
The juxtaposition is hilarious but it's also heartwarming to see a film treat marriage and kids as the ultimate turn-on. Much of the humor comes from his enthusiastic discovery of enjoying submission.Wilde and Hoffman bare a lot, though not quite all, in sex scenes that stay on the tasteful side of sex in cinema. More humor derives from Elliot discussing his sexual discoveries with roommate (Chase Sui Wonders).
Their inexperience points out the comic dynamic of S&M without ever mocking the sincere practitioners. References from The Brown Bunny to Travis Kelcie also show a complete regard for pop culture, from a controversial indie film to Taylor Swift's fiance.
She knows he is falling for her and has no intention of committing to a relationship.
Erika's art is funny. One of Elliot's jobs is to chew gum to place on a canvas in the shape of a female body part. Erika records sex sounds to play in her video installations
The story is framed as Elliot telling cops (Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho) how he met Erika in an interrogation. This framing is unnecessary, although the flashback to a very specific time in the past is a clever reference to another erotic film.
Ultimately, this is the age-old story of a woman coming into a young man's life and changing him. Elliot goes from boy to man in a roundabout, awkward, explicit and bumbling way.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
