A woman floats, lifelessly, in a backyard swimming pool, watched with horror by a chubby young man in lacy bra and panties. The scene is not simply a cheeky gender switch of the opening to “Sunset Boulevard,” but a mystery that will be solved mostly in flashback and TV-friendly frames.
“I Want Your Sex” (a title borrowed from George Michael’s 1987 single) is the 12th feature from the indie filmmaker Gregg Araki and his first in a dozen years. A jolly sex comedy that plays out in frisky conversations and gumball colors (no pasty flesh tones here), the movie offers sadomasochism as a road to self-confidence and emotional maturity. In dire need of both is Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), a 20-something ditherer who doesn’t know what he wants — in life or in bed — beyond a vague aspiration to host a podcast. This is someone whose appearance suggests he has yet to master a comb.
Elliot desperately needs a mentor, and neither his spectacularly disinterested girlfriend, Minerva (Charli XCX), nor his bi-curious roommate, the adorable Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), will do. Enter Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a provocative pop artist and his boss at the gallery where he’s a lowly assistant. Like a modern-day Vargas girl, Erika favors skintight clothing and sexually frank come-ons; sensing immediately that Elliot is deeply confused — and terrified and turned on — by her untrammeled libido, she sends him home to bone up, as it were, on the vintage randiness of a Harold Robbins novel. (This moment reminded me that the eternally boyish Araki is in his mid-sixties now, though his sense of humor remains recognizably piquant.)
“I’m a slave to this vagina,” Elliot confesses to his gallery colleague (Mason Gooding), as they slap chewed gum onto a representation of Erika’s vulva. (She also tapes her orgasms for aural inspiration.) After hours, Elliot happily submits to her playful restraints and orificial intrusions. There is a sense that Erika, who is approaching a career crisis, is exercising a control over Elliot’s soft body that she’s unable to exert over the public perception of her art, and Wilde plays her with a flicker of vulnerability that’s unexpectedly touching. The film’s casting is impeccable, though I would have liked to have seen more of Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville, as the lugubrious detectives questioning Elliot about the body in the pool. And Daveed Diggs, playing the overseer of Erika’s gallery and business affairs, does wonders with a minuscule role and way too few lines.
Unspooling in large, white-lacquered spaces and small apartments — these people are indoor cats — “I Want Your Sex” is dotted with gentle visual humor and casual nods to similarly-themed movies. “9 1/2 Weeks” is name-checked early on, and Araki teasingly positions his stars to suggest the famous poster from “The Graduate,” with Dustin Hoffman’s character gazing, mesmerized, at Mrs. Robinson’s extended leg. Two becalmed young men, two older seductresses; the difference is that the earlier Hoffman had a moodiness that gave his character depth and his movie a hint of danger.
There’s nothing dangerous at play in “I Want Your Sex.” Raunchy but neither vulgar nor particularly explicit — nor even sexy — the picture is likely to offend only the daintiest of sensibilities. Unlike Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Lee in “Secretary” (2002), who made submission a feminist power move, Elliot is too cuddly to generate an erotic charge. His teddy-bear cuteness is the movie’s safe word; ecstasy makes him look loopy rather than lustful. Moreover, he’s a bumbler who repeatedly misreads situations, resulting in a disastrous threesome and a fumbled encounter with a worldly friend of Erika’s (Roxane Mesquida) who’s rightly repelled by his gauche eagerness.
These missteps could have created some welcome friction in a screenplay (by Araki and Karley Sciortino) that’s as slick as Erika’s well-lubed sex toys, a jokey ode to getting some that skirts the jagged shoals of genuine intimacy. It is also very, very funny; and Araki — whose wonderfully daring “Mysterious Skin” (2005) remains his masterwork — directs with an appealing joyfulness. Still, it’s curious that someone who spends part of his movie condemning Gen Z-ers for their sexual conservatism and urging them to come out and join the party should now be so hesitant to take risks himself.
I Want Your Sex Rated R. May I direct you to the title? Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.
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