Review of Gregg Araki’s film I want your sex. A colourful comedy about an unequal relationship between an alpha woman and a young art student.

Gregg Araki is a director we love who has often shifted tone from film to film. With I want your sex he mischievously blends comedy and romantic comedy, as he is known to do, with a small dash of erotic thriller.

A meeting that turns an art student’s life upside down

We follow Elliot (the very charming Cooper Hoffman), an art student who is something of a loser. He does not really know what he wants to do with his life, still shares a flat with his friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), and maintains a routine, rather boring relationship with the very cold Minerva (Charli xcx). His bland little world is turned upside down when he lands a job working on the next exhibition by provocative artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde, iconic).

Surrounded by other young students, such as the very gay and uninhibited Zap (Mason Gooding), Elliot savours every new day at work and throws himself into every task. He is in awe of Erika, an alpha woman who is influential in art circles and highly charismatic. When his boss summons him to her office and proposes an affair, Elliot thinks he is hallucinating. Erika is going to educate him: Elliot, who is rather shy and even retiring by nature, will unleash fantasies of submission in her company…

Gregg Araki returns to a pop aesthetic between romantic comedy and erotic thriller

One could see this feature film as a colourful, heterosexual variation on the film Pillion. In terms of style, Gregg Araki returns here to an aesthetic very close to that of his cult and unfinished series Now, Apocalypse: it is pop, a bit like a luxury sitcom, with a delicious taste for kitsch and the absurd.

While the film is structured around a mystery (Erika’s possible death), the heart of the work is the BDSM relationship between the artist big boss and her young, straight, boy-next-door recruit, whom she will loosen up. There is humour, and the relationships are portrayed fancifully, but something rather beautiful nevertheless emerges: a truth about these dominant-submissive relationships, which make it possible to open up a new world, a new self, a new universe. Manipulation and tenderness intertwine before things take a darker and more complex turn.

Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman brilliantly carry this offbeat comedy

I want your sex relies, to our great delight, on its excellent acting duo: Olivia Wilde finds an extremely powerful and iconic role here, in which she has a blast, while Cooper Hoffman is very cute, moving, endearing, and sexy as a straight man discovering unconventional sexuality. We also appreciate the eroticisation of this character, whose generous curves suit him wonderfully.

Juvenile, sweet, and highly entertaining, the film is well paced and appealingly light.

Film released in cinemas on 26 July 2026

Other films about dominant-submissive relationships

• Pillion
• The Days and Nights of China Blue
• Halteroflic