Gregg Araki’s ‘I Want Your Sex’ *** (2026, Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Charli XCX) – Classic Movie Review 14,033

Gregg Araki’s 2026 erotic art world satirical comedy film I Want Your Sex stars Cooper Hoffman as Elliot, who lands a job for crazy over-sexed artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) as her sexual muse.

Gregg Araki’s 2026 erotic art world satirical comedy film I Want Your Sex stars Cooper Hoffman as 23-year-old Elliot, who lands a job for crazy, older, over-sexed artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) as her sexual muse and lover, and falls for her as she explores BDSM role-play with him. It’s a comedy version of Fifty Shades of Gray mixed with Sunset Boulevard. (That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write!)

It starts with a bloody-faced Elliot finding Erika floating naked and unconscious in the swimming pool of her luxurious home, seen from above and then from underwater, just like William Holden’s character Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. [Spoiler alert] Joe Gillis is a dead man who tells the story from beyond the grave, but Erika Tracy is just pretending to be dead. (Little-known fact, Billy Wilder originally shot a different opening scene with Joe’s corpse talking with other bodies in a morgue, but test audiences laughed and Wilder replaced it with the now‑iconic pool sequence.)

I Want Your Sex treads risky ground for comedy, but it is certainly ambitious and confident enough, extremely bright and lively. It may be superficial and patchy, slightly struggling in places, but it is highly amusing and entertaining in others, and the game, full-on performances see it through as a largely most enjoyable bawdy comedy film. Olivia Wilde’s fearless turn is a delicious tour-de-force and Cooper Hoffman manages to keep the film grounded with his eager chubby charm. Both actors are game for anything, and it pays off big time for Araki’s film.

Do we want it actually to be about something and make some serious points about the art world and power politics in relationships? Do we want it to be a neo noir? Do we want it to be an erotic thriller? If we do, we’ll feel deeply frustrated. Karley Sciortino and Araki’s script needs to be sharper and funnier, a bit more focused, a bit more incisive. So it’s just a lightweight, light-hearted, anything goes, alternative lifestyle comedy. Fine! At least no one can accuse it of being pretentious, maybe of being in bad taste, but that’s the whole point, maybe of being boring, but only very slightly and very occasionally. Actually, it’s ridiculous, silly, wayward, self-indulgent fun for easy-going, left-of-centre grown-ups. You expect the young Carrie Bradshaw and her crew to arrive on screen at any moment. Alas, there is no cameo from Sarah Jessica Parker. Is anybody going to be shocked? It is about as shocking as the early episodes of Sex and the City before it blanded out. Episode five of series one called The Power of Female Sex (aired July 5, 1998) is a sitcom gem.

Gregg Araki acknowledges that Sunset Boulevard is the inspiration for the opening sequence with Olivia Wilde beginning the movie face down in a pool. ‘That’s 100% Sunset Boulevard. It wasn’t in my original script, but then on set I decided that I wanted to have a kind of film noir framework for my movie, and have the audience going: ‘Who is that? What’s happening?’ Sunset Boulevard plays into those kinds of expectations as well, so it was definitely intentional.’

‘I don’t disagree that Erika is like Norma Desmond, but I also think of her as being an S&M Miranda Priestley, just one of these larger than life female characters. I want drag queens to be her for Halloween!’

I Want Your Sex is directed by Gregg Araki and written by Karley Sciortino and Araki. Sciortino started writing the script in 2013, based on a relationship she had with an older male editor. She rewrote the script in 2023 with Araki, who suggested swapping the genders of the main characters.

It stars Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, and Charli XCX.

Gregg Araki’s 90s star James Duval turns up for a cameo as the wedding minister at the end.

It is Gregg Araki’s first film in a decade. He made some great films in the 90s and 00s. Check out Totally F***ed Up, Nowhere, The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin and The Living End.

It was shot in Los Angeles from 2 October 2024 to 27 October 2024.

It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2026, and was released by Magnolia Pictures in the US on 31 July 2026.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 14,033

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