Director Gregg Araki is known for his outrageous sex scenes.
His Teenage Apocalypse trilogy (Totally F---ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere) set the tone, delivering a no-holds-barred, grungy group of films that marched to the beat of their own disillusioned drum. And just like pretty much all of Araki’s work, there’s a ton of sex.
But even by the director’s own horny standards, his latest film (and his first in 12 years), I Want Your Sex, is a whole new level.
It’s punk, colorful, and horny as hell. That probably won’t surprise you, given the title is literally a declaration of desire. And it’s a direct refutation of younger generations’ declining sexual appetites, something the characters discuss often in the film.
But for a movie with sex in the title, it needs to deliver on its promise. After all, we’ve all seen movies where a trailer or title makes us anticipate something, but in reality we get something entirely different. Reader, I’m thrilled to report I Want Your Sex absolutely delivers, giving us the best sex scenes of the year.
One in particular is especially orgasmic.
I Want Your Sex is straightforward in execution. Elliot (Cooper Hoffman, 23) gets a job working as an assistant for Erika (Olivia Wilde, 42, hot off her directorial hit The Invite), a provocative artist whose work is all about sex and sexuality. “During sex, your most intimate and primal self is revealed,” Erika says in an interview about her work. A week into the job, Erika wants him to do more than just coffee runs—she wants Elliot to be her sexual muse.
Elliot isn’t sure at first. It’s not that he isn’t into Erika (he very much is), but he has a girlfriend, Minerva (a very funny Charli XCX). Elliot longs to be sexually active and sexually adventurous, and his favorite thing in the world is sex.
Minerva is anything but. To her, sex is an exhausting chore, and beyond the bedroom, she seems to have nothing but contempt for him. “We just had sex 11 days ago,” she says when he asks to get it on. Elliot is stuck fantasizing about sex, rather than actually having it.
It should come as no shock to learn that Elliot cannot resist Erika’s offer, given that he can’t stop thinking about—or pleasuring himself to—the thought of her. We smash cut from a scene with Elliot playing mini-golf with his roommate to a close-up of him wearing a dog collar on Erika’s white leather couch. It’s on.
What unfolds is a fast, furious, and legitimately shocking montage of Elliot and Erika having kinky sex. We see Elliot with his underwear pulled down, being spanked by a leather-clad Erika, who makes him shout “I’m a whore!” each time she smacks his butt with a paddle.
She films him crawling on his knees in a maid outfit (well, just a hat and lacy underwear), moving towards her like an eager puppy. He’s bound to the bed, blindfolded as she comes in with a pair of scissors, wearing an entirely different dominatrix outfit and a long blond wig. She cuts a hole in his pants and gets on top of him, whipping him with a riding crop and slapping him. To top it all off, she lubes up a pink dildo and… well, you can probably guess.
It’s an unforgettable scene only in part because it’s racy and daring to show a side of sex we rarely see on screen. What’s special about it is that despite how kinky and chock-full of sex it is, it doesn’t feel pornographic.
The scene is almost like a later-in-life coming-of-age for Elliot. Hoffman, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, taps into something incredible here as Elliot discovers his penchant for submissive desire. Elliot has always had a joy for life to him, and a charming spunkiness, but it’s clear through his face that this full-throttle exploration of dom-sub dynamics and sexual proclivity is everything he’s ever dreamed of.
And this montage filmed with kinetic energy isn’t afraid to get a little silly and messy, just like the sex itself. For Elliot, his sexual exploration with Erika is a thrilling new chapter in his life that unlocks a whole new understanding of himself.
I Want Your Sex isn’t just about sex. It’s about power, desire, trust, art, and the way these things intertwine. But sex is at the core of all that, and Araki’s film explores how sex is far from boring. It’s something that can liberate us and show us there’s a better, richer life waiting when we open ourselves up to desire. Through brilliant, vulnerable performances from Hoffman and Wilde, I Want Your Sex turns fornication into an art form, one that allows us to better understand ourselves.
Great cinema titillates us. It excites us. Above all, it allows us to feel. No movie understands that this year better than I Want Your Sex.
