For the first time in 14 years, writer/director Gregg Araki is directing a feature film. All hail the horny oddball king of indie 90s cinema. The Nowhere/Doom Generation helmer’s latest work is I Want Your Sex, a kooky psychosexual comedy that kicks off with both a Sunset Boulevard homage and a character declaring “I’m a slave to that vagina.” From there, Sex establishes the film’s lead, cash-strapped 23-year-old Elliot (Cooper Hoffman). He’s snagged a job working for provocateur artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). She’s brash. She’s outspoken. And one fine morning, she announces she wants to bone Elliot.

From there, the pair begin a domme/sub relationship, plucking the sheltered, sex-shy Elliot out of his shell. In their sexual encounters, Tracy controls all, and he’s just along for the ride. He absolutely loves it, to the point that he can’t get his boss out of his head. She wants to keep things exclusively physical. He’s suddenly become obsessed with her. This cannot end well, as the wraparound segments showing Elliot in a police interrogation room make clear.

Araki and Karley Sciortino’s I Want Your Sex script is sometimes jagged, even a little messy. For instance, the writing oscillates from cutting commentary to surface level “kids these days” observations. Some dialogue is razor sharp. Other times the punchlines sound tin-eared. Yet these imperfections feel borderline fitting for a sex-oriented movie. Physical intimacy is rarely a polished act. It’s often awkward or punctuated by unexpected obstacles. Films about this topic should exhibit similarly unflinchingly human foibles.

Even with some major storytelling bumps, Araki and Sciortino’s prose generally kept me intrigued as to where it was going next. Both this script and the entire film especially thrive in realizing Erika Tracy. What a magnificently outsized and confident creation she is. One can never tell what words or creatively cutting phrases will emerge from her lips next. It’s a character so deliciously written…then Olivia Wilde’s performance takes it to the next level.

Just as 2021 was Dev Patel summer, summer 2026, between The Invite and now I Want Your Sex, belongs to Wilde. Her engrossing Erika Tracy work is a riot. There’s nary a sliver of snark or winking to the audience in her performance. She instead fully submerges herself into this authoritative sexual force of nature. This figure’s larger than life, but you believe the presence she exudes. Commanding every eyeball upon walking into a room feels totally natural in Wilde’s hands. It’s a terrific conviction-riddled performance further accentuated by Wilde’s excellent comedic line deliveries. She’ll deliver the most outlandish or cruel phrases with hilarious matter-of-fact candor.

While Olivia Wilde’s the highlight of I Want Your Sex’s cast, Araki also wrings memorable work out of Cooper Hoffman. Much like his father, Hoffman proves adept eliciting often contradictory emotions out of viewers. In the space of one scene, he can make Elliot achingly tragic, pathetic, sympathetic, and infuriating without missing a beat. He’s also a great, easily blustered foil to any madness Wilde’s Tracy conjures up. These performers ensure Elliot and Tracy are a modern incarnation of Bringing Up Baby or What’s Up, Doc?’s leads, albeit with more pink dildos.

These performers (as well as memorable supporting turns from Daveed Diggs and Chase Sui Wonders) inhabit a vibrant world where every apartment is littered with sizzling orange, yellow, and green hues. Production designer Angelique Clark lends each location not only eye-popping colors, but also distinctive identities. For instance, Tracy’s bourgeoise house and workspace, for instance, rely on silver and whites. That sharply contrasts to the brighter shades pasted over the domiciles cash-strapped characters inhabit. Speaking of Tracy’s mansion, all her furniture is so perfectly “hoity-toity” artist. The decades have changed, but Araki’s gift for immediately striking backdrops hasn’t missed a beat.  

In an age of comedies shot lifelessly for Netflix viewers to half-heartedly consume, I Want Your Sex’s popping imagery is even more delectable. Such visuals service a story that delivers the goods on shock value laughs and social commentary on generationally different approaches to sex. The latter element fascinatingly includes Elliot loving how he can finally let loose sexually and explore his fantasies. However, inside his mind, he yearns for Tracy to adhere to traditional gender and relationship roles (“I’ll make you breakfast in the morning, okay?” she chipperly reveals in one of his daydreams).

Centering Elliot’s interiority on him exploring uncharted kinky territory while simultaneously craving self-servicing conventionality is a compelling dramatic paradox. I Want Your Sex works plenty well as a surface level vessel for great hanky panky-based punchlines. However, Araki and Sciortino’s thoughtful script ensures viewers will leave I Want Your Sex thinking about much more than just Olivia Wilde’s head-to-toe leather garbs.

Granted, the features second half could’ve used even more of Sex’s most surrealist tendencies. Hand-drawn animated flourishes appearing in the first 15 minutes, for instance, evaporate once the first act ends. Meanwhile, third-act plot points focusing solely on Elliot bring the energy levels down. “When Erika Tracy’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking ‘where’s Erika Tracy?’”, as a wise Homer Simpson might’ve once said.

Though not the second coming (insert Beavis & Butthead laugh here) of Nowhere and The Doom Generation, I Want Your Sex provides some hilarious and, dare I even say, titillating entertainment. “Sex is all about performance,” Erika Tracy declares early in I Want Your Sex. This film’s performance, then, is one exuding confidence, visual creativity, and wit. 14 years of foreplay was a small price to pay for a new quality Araki comedy.

I Want Your Sex is now playing in theaters everywhere.