Gregg Araki’s Limp Satire of Gen Z’s Sexuality Treats Predation Like a Kink

Her work is somewhere between Dave LaChapelle and Jeff Koons, which is to say she makes oversized approximations of ball gags and photographs herself and her lovers in highly saturated colors in the midst of sex. This is Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a self-proclaimed provocateur who is either the poster child of the contemporary pop art scene or else its persona non grata, depending on who you ask. She is certainly bullish, selfish, deeply ridiculous with just about everything she does, and practices her life the same way she practices her art: with an unabashed, almost sociopathic admiration for abuse.

The lead character in I Want Your Sex, Gregg Araki’s first feature film in about twelve years (White Bird in a Blizzard), is clearly designed to offend someone, though it’s not exactly clear who. Her artwork is explicit but hardly novel. Araki clearly feels incredulously towards Gen Z, who is reportedly having sex at a much tamer rate than elder generations, and he uses Erika as a mouthpiece. “Why aren’t young people having sex,” he asks, like a reverse Boomer who is upset about these kids and their cellphones.

The thing is, the question is interesting. Why aren’t young people as willing to have sex as millennials? But I Want Your Sex doesn’t answer that question so much as blast through it. It’s a funny film, an occasionally sexy film, and it’s definitely an odd film, but its never really any of those things for as much as it could be and never quite for the reasons Araki thinks it is. It is strangest in the way that it treats sexual predation, abuse and sexual assault with the same casualness that Erika approaches her work.

Part of that work is Erika’s assistant and human sex toy, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), who is either her muse or her breathing dildo. One day, he wakes up at her home with blood all over his face, dressed in pink lingerie, with no clue how he got there. All he knows is what’s in front of him: Erika passed out, face down in the pool. The film then cuts to Elliot being interrogated by two cops (Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho, both utterly wasted). It’s unclear what Erika’s fate is just yet, but the police want to know all the juicy details of this bizarre relationship, and so Araki cuts back 9 1/2 weeks to when they first met.

Elliot is a bedraggled recent UCLA college grad with an art degree, zero direction, and seemingly zero ambition. He is also desperate for cash, constantly borrowing money from his best friend and roommate, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) when not being callously discarded by his girlfriend Minerva (Charli XCX), who is studying for a postdoc in the sciences. Hoffman’s shaggy boyishness is perfect for Araki’s conception of a happy-go-lucky Gen Z kid, who seems clear-eyed about the rough hand his generation has been dealt but not so much that it would deter him from enjoying things.

Upon meeting Erika, whose wardrobe seems pulled from the Met Gala archives, he is hired on the spot and shortly after propositioned. “You’re not gonna be weird if we have sex, are you?” She then immediately has him crawl across the floor to beg. So begins a strange affair that straddles the line between grooming and font for artistic inspiration, but whether Erika is actually interested in Elliot seems besides the point; either way she is using him beyond his own comprehension.

I Want Your Sex is a good enough time when it leans into parody, less so when it is trying its hand at sexual commentary. There’s a lot of sharp satire in here about the contemporary art world and the way that it knowingly sells its artifice while simultaneously demanding to be taken seriously. But as a… critique? meditation? on Gen Z’s relative obstinance, it feels extremely dated and, in some instances, belligerently misguided. It is perhaps seen no more clearly than in Mason Gooding’s character, a nonchalant gay man whose sexual predilections rival that of Erika’s, and seems like a conservative Boomer’s conception of a homosexual.

Candy-colored and ebullient, I Want Your Sex is not a bad film, but its hard to think of it positively when we know just how much more effective Araki has been behind the camera.

In fact, despite the film being directed by a gay man and written by Karley Sciortino, a sex expert and founder of sex advice website Slutever, almost none of the depictions here of sex or sexuality seem all that legitimate. It is a film that treats sexual diversity with derision and consensual non-mongoamy with irresponsibility. I know, that is partly the point, but the attitutde towards an explicitly abusive relationship as twee and quirky hardly seems evolved, and it’s never clear if Sciortino or Araki are making some grander statement about the limits of control or artistic permission.

Candy-colored and ebullient, I Want Your Sex is not a bad film, but its hard to think of it positively when we know just how much more effective Araki has been behind the camera. The film is just never sure of what it is. As satire, its flat. As cautionary tale, its ridiculous. It would probably be good to dissect the younger generation’s aversion to sex, but I’m not sure they should be forced into it, nor watching it, either.

I Want Your Sex screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.