Review: I Want Your Sex — Crooked Marquee

After The Invite, I Want Your Sex marks the second entry with Olivia Wilde in this year’s unofficial series “Are Straight People OK?” (The answer is still no, which is not surprising given that this movie was made by New Queer Cinema director Gregg Araki.) It also marks the second dom-com of 2026 after Pillion. Yet while that Alexander Skarsgård-starring S&M romance had a softness to balance its sharp edges, I Want Your Sex skewers the contemporary art scene, sexual obsession, and Gen Z without a trace of sentimentality. It’s brightly colored, funny, and not serious at all, even while it has something real to say about what sex looks like in 2026.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is not sure what he wants from life—or from his art degree. When the 23-year-old gets hired by L.A. artist/provocateur Erika Tracy (Wilde) as an assistant at her gallery, the job isn’t what he imagined. First, he spends hours chewing gum and sticking it to a giant canvas to complete her work of a vagina made out of chewing gum, but soon, he catches Erika’s eye for a more … personal task. She proposes they have sex, and she’s happy to hear that he’s in a relationship, so he’s unlikely to catch feelings for his new boss. Elliot’s girlfriend, Minerva (Charli XCX), is more interested in becoming a doctor than she is in having sex, and so Elliot soon becomes obsessed with Erika and the submissive role she asks him to play.

Wilde was the weak link in The Invite, but she’s marvelous as the imperious Erika. Her character is a sociopath consumed with sex, shock, and success, and Wilde’s dry delivery makes Erika bitingly funny. Hoffman is the real deal; you see shades of his late father in some of his expressions, but Elliot doesn’t feel like anything I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman play in a career full of wildly different roles. Elliot is eager to please while lacking any direction in his life. He manages to be impressively naive even while his escapades with Erika get progressively pervier. Hoffman captures all of the nuances of a very funny role, making Elliot feel like a human being in this absolutely ridiculous movie that bears little resemblance to real life.

In addition to Charli XCX’s delightfully dispassionate performance as Elliot’s girlfriend, Wilde and Hoffman are surrounded by a strong, absolutely game supporting cast. Tony winner Daveed Diggs plays Erika’s bitchy right-hand at the gallery with the perfect level of poison. Mason Gooding is Elliot’s rich kid coworker, who puts more energy into his regular orgies than he does into his work. Chase Sui Wonders is a believable mess as Elliot’s best friend and roommate, Apple. And I’m not sure what made Araki cast Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho as detectives investigating a murder, but I’m not mad about it.

For his first movie since 2014’s White Bird in a Blizzard, Araki brings a level of intentional goofiness to the proceedings, inserting animated fantasy interludes that punctuate I Want Your Sex. There’s style in the sets of the film, particularly in the sleek interiors of Erika’s mansion and the colorful art-school-inflected rooms of Elliot and Apple’s shared apartment. They don’t just look good; they contribute to our sense of our leads, both in who they are and in how different they are from one another.

There’s a generational divide between the 23-year-old Elliot and the 40-ish Erika with commentary from the 66-year-old Araki on how they approach sex differently. Elliot’s Gen Z existence is almost entirely sexless before he meets Erika, his girlfriend lacks any interest in it, and his roommate laments her boring love life. Yet it’s not entirely clear what Araki is saying about this other than that it’s bad that Gen Z isn’t having enough sex, especially since Erika’s horniess just gets everyone in trouble.

From the card at the beginning that says “9 ½ weeks ago,” I Want Your Sex has all the hallmarks of an erotic thriller of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but it’s much funnier—and much kinkier—in its story about the feckless dope who gets roped in by the femme fatale than most of the genre it’s nodding to. It’s only a little bit smarter than your standard sexy suspense movie of that era, but it’s dumb in a fun way.