Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex opened July 31 on 700 screens through Magnolia Pictures. Araki has said his films typically open on two screens. The gap tells you something about the scale of the return.
The project took 12 years to reach theaters. Araki first conceived it around 2012, originally with a male-dominant dynamic. After #MeToo, he rewrote it, placing a female artist in control. Olivia Wilde plays Erika Tracy, a provocateur contemporary artist. Cooper Hoffman plays Elliot, her younger assistant drawn into her orbit. The ensemble includes Charli XCX, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Johnny Knoxville, and Margaret Cho.
Critical reception was strong. The film holds 89% on Rotten Tomatoes from 118 reviews. The site’s consensus calls it “one of indie stalwart Gregg Araki’s most accessible works yet,” adding that Wilde and Hoffman deliver “incisive commentary on carnality and connection.” Katie Walsh of the Tribune News Service called it “a silly-sexy slice of pop-noir art world satire” and described it as “Araki’s manifesto about the power and creative energy of the erotic.”
Speaking to Metro Weekly, Araki laid out his thesis. “I absolutely feel like that old cliché of ‘Make love, not war,’” he said. “I feel like so much of that hatred and that violence…is tied to oppression…if people could be more free, more open, and not so uptight, I just think the world would be a much better place.” On his position in the industry: “I’m of color, I’m queer…I don’t view that as a disadvantage. I view it as a superpower.”
Araki’s filmography runs from The Living End (1992) through the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy to Mysterious Skin (2004). His last feature was released in 2014. I Want Your Sex is his first since then.
