Frisky Satire ‘I Want Your Sex’ Tries Too Hard To Satisfy its Title

Greg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex” is a comedy that tries hard to justify its in-your-face title. The story written by Mr. Araki and Karley Sciortino, a Vogue columnist whose brand of feminism proudly reclaims the word “slut,” concerns the disenfranchisement of Gen Z, an art world in which aesthetics take a distant second to outrage, and the haplessness of men. Heterosexual men, it should be noted. The gay characters, particularly Zap (Mason Gooding), have their acts together.As for our leading man, Elliot. He’s wimpy, insecure and, notwithstanding a college education, clueless. As portrayed by Cooper Hoffman, you might remember the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman from his memorable debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” (2021), Elliot is a type we’ve encountered before: The well-meaning schlemiel. Think Woody Allen back in the day or Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” (1960). The tone and tempo here are reminiscent of pictures by Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges.How familiar the point-man for New Queer Cinema, a genre from which Mr. Araki is seemingly inextractable, might be with these progenitors I don’t know. But it’s clear that he knows his way around the oeuvres of John Waters, Pedro Almodóvar, and Wes Anderson. Mr. Araki shares Mr. Waters’ fondness for social extremity, Mr. Almodóvar’s pointed sense of melodrama, and Mr. Anderson’s mannered precisionism. “I Want Your Sex” skews young in its affectations, so it is startling to learn that the auteur is 66-years old. For a senior citizen, Mr. Araki is stepping lively.The movie opens with a direct nod to film noir: A blood-splattered Elliot stumbles out onto the patio of a posh residence only to discover that his boss, Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), is floating, face down, in the swimming pool. Time doesn’t stand still in Mr. Araki’s universe: We are shuttled to a police interrogation room in which Elliot is being grilled by a pair of detectives portrayed by Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho. Our frazzled hero begins to tell a story of sexual harassment in the workplace, looking for love in all the wrong places, and the rigors of having to chew gum for a living.Elliot had been flailing his way through a post-graduate marketplace when he landed a job as an assistant to Erika, a mercurial art star specializing in post-modernist provocations centered on sex, sex, sex. Ms. Wilde has a fine time stretching the boundaries not only of propriety, but the revealing outfits that are indicative of her character’s immaculately cultivated public persona. Erika strikes a Koonsian note by telling Elliot about the shallowness of contemporary art and how she’s riding that truth straight to the bank. In the meantime, Elliot, along with Zap and a group of other twenty-somethings, assists Erika in creating a gynecological artwork made with wads-upon-wads of chewed-up gum.The art scene is a readymade target for satire, though the milieu depicted by Mr. Araki and Ms. Sciortino is notably broad, as are the unseemly shenanigans that ensue when Erika begins a sexual relationship with Elliot. The latter is content to submit to his boss’s demands, though things get weird when Elliot begins to get feelings for Erika. When he convinces his roommate, Apple (an adorable Chase Sui Wonders), to join him and his famous employer for a threesome things go awry, big time. How famous Erika will remain is a question posed by the critical drubbing and commercial failure of her most recent exhibition, the consequences of which lead us back to a blood-splattered Elliot by the pool.Notwithstanding the hyperbolized and often graphic nature of Mr. Araki’s comedy, “I Want Your Sex” is ingrained with, if not a strain of Puritanism, then a kind of moral reckoning that underscores the willfulness of its presumed outrages. From the candy-colored palette to the cartoonish fillips interrupting the proceedings, the film is never steady enough in its satiric means to prompt the guffaws it so strenuously aims for. The audience with whom I attended the picture tittered aplenty, but, on the whole, resisted the filmmaker’s arm-twisting. In the end, the auteur cruises on the all-in enthusiasm of Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Wilde. Should that sound appealing, you’ll likely settle for the flippant brand of sex Mr. Araki is proferring.

Frisky Satire ‘I Want Your Sex’ Tries Too Hard To Satisfy its Title

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