After taking twelve years away from the world of cinema to primarily work in Television, Greg Araki’s work is finally back on the big screen, and his latest outing, I Want Your Sex, is just as wild and as decadent as ever.
The film follows Elliott (Cooper Hoffman), a sexually frustrated, neurotic twenty-something, who suddenly finds himself at the sexual beck and call of his boss, the domineering and ultra-confident art gallery boss Erika (Olivia Wilde).
Keen to explore queerness, sexual politics and generational differences, the filmmaker recently discussed how his own experiences impacted the picture in an interview with Vanity Fair: “When you think about it, all of your hookups and your relationships and your bad relationships… a lot of that stuff is, at the time, not fun. It’s unpleasant. But with the wisdom of age, you look back on it…. I learned so much about myself. It became kind of the major theme of the movie: this whole notion of how important sex is in terms of life—and [what it means] if Gen Z is not participating.”
Embedding those very experiences into his work, Araki proves himself to be a master of tone. Flooding the screen with wacky humour, hand-drawn animation, and sincere conversations around sex, none of it ever feels out of place. Instead, it all feels perfectly woven into the story, creating one of the year’s most unique films as a result.
Visually, the picture is just as bold. From the very first frame, it is clear that the director is firing on all cylinders and making up for lost time. With a colour palette to rival Barbie (2023) and with enough leather to make a dominatrix blush, the backdrop of Elliot and Erika’s sordid affair is simply stunning to look at.
In the two central performances are Hoffman & Wilde, who are just as brilliant as ever. Playing both roles straight, the pair allow the comedy to come from the madness around them, rather than the madness within the characters themselves. Other performers may well have failed to deliver such a nuanced take on the toxic relationship that ensues between the two, but the pair constantly remind us that there are two human beings at the centre of this heightened reality.
Of course, given the very nature of the film, it won’t play well for all audiences. Hell, the title alone may well send people away, but make no mistake, this is easily Araki’s most accessible title yet. For longtime fans, that may well be a mistake, but for newcomers to his work, this is the perfect entry point.
In a time when the validity of the sex scene is constantly being called into question, here is a movie that puts a mirror up to its audience and asks us to evaluate our own relationship with sex, good or bad. I Want Your Sex is a vital film, one that fights against the current cinematic landscape and is all the better for it. Once again, Greg Araki proves that he is one of the funniest, sexiest, and most thought-provoking filmmakers of his generation. It’s good to have him back.
I Want Your Sex had its UK Premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2026
