‘I Want Your Sex’ Review: Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde Get Natural and Habitual in Gregg Araki’s Surprisingly Insightful Dom-Com [B+] | Sundance

The moment Cooper Hoffman’s Elliot awakens with a bloody lip and wearing only a pink lacy bra and panties, it’s clear Gregg Araki’s new film I Want Your Sex is going to be a kinky, chaotic ride. And that is exactly what Araki brought to an eager crowd of Sundance faithfuls when it premiered Friday night at the Eccles Theater in Park City.

In a nod to Sunset Boulevard, the film opens as Elliot finds his boss Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) floating facedown in a swimming pool, the detritus of a night of debauchery scattered across the floor inside. Immediately, a bright pink title card cheerily informs us we are flashing back to 9 ½ weeks ago, another of Araki’s unsubtle but effective nods to the sexy noirs and neo-noirs that made stars out of Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney, and Humphrey Bogart.

Narrating his story to two police detectives (uncharacteristically straight-faced and no-nonsense Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho), Elliot explains that he was a recent UCLA grad with an art degree when he interviewed for a job with renowned mixed media artist Erika Tracy. His interview is brief and he is hired on the spot after Erika has a bit of fun making the awkward 23-year-old squirm with some uncomfortable questions. 

Erika’s art is sex and her gallery is a visual feast of strange installations. Sculptures of dildos and photographs of models in chains and chaps. In his first assignment, Elliot and his work friend Zap (Mason Gooding) stick chewed gum to a canvas to bring texture and form to the labia drawn on it. “Remind me what the difference is between this and porn,” says Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), his best friend and roommate. “Lighting and context,” Elliot says with a shrug.

Even Erika’s wardrobe is an extension of her art. Costume designers Arianne Phillips and Monica Chamberlain dress her in shiny leather, plunging necklines, and stilettos, inappropriate attire in most offices, but somehow expected here. Everything about her exudes seduction, sensuality and the type of confidence that makes her both terrifying to be near and utterly impossible to resist. She is the exact opposite of self-conscious Elliot sitting across the desk from her in a Waste Management shirt, trying desperately not to say the wrong thing. That they would leap into an S&M, dom-sub relationship is both shocking and unsurprising, and also wickedly funny. One moment, they are sitting in her office. The next, he’s sprawled naked across her lap and getting smacked with a riding crop. There is no subtext, no hint or teasing. Araki’s sex comedy is audacious and wild, though the sex isn’t the joke, and therefore the film itself is very adult not only in its content, but in its tone. 

Part of the fun for Erika is that Elliot has a girlfriend (Charlie xcx) and so she doesn’t need to worry about him getting attached. Except that his relationship with Minerva is virtually sexless as she is focused entirely on her science dissertation and has no interest in his art or, really, in him. And so the more time he spends being bossed around and noticed by Erika, the more he starts to fantasize about her in a series of outlandish, playfully designed vignettes. 

It is hard to imagine two people more perfectly cast here than Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde. Hoffman’s career started with Paul Thomas Anderson’s age-inappropriate relationship comedy/drama Licorice Pizza, and he lends some of Gary’s wide-eyed curiosity to Elliot, but none of Gary’s wise-beyond-his-years assuredness. Hoffman has already proven himself a talented actor, but his work in I Want Your Sex is his most brazen, fearless performance so far. 

Wilde throws herself so completely and believably into her role that it’s hard to tell where the actress ends and the character begins. She  conveys Erika’s contradictory need to create and disdain for creation, mocking her own work and the people who consume it with a blend of curiosity and judgment, and it’s impossible to ever know what she really thinks about anything. “Sometimes I just say bullshit to see if anyone’s listening,” she says, leaving us to wonder if she has said anything real at all. 

Lurking in the background is a very funny but underutilized Davees Diggs as Erika’s business partner, Vikktor, his cool, detached swagger inviting so many questions and no answers. The truth is, those answers would probably be much less fun than the mystery of him, but he’s so intriguing every time he enters a scene that a bit more of him would be most welcome. 

Gregg Araki has never been shy when it comes to themes of sexual exploration and awakening. From his earlier features like Mysterious Skin (his first trip to Sundance), to his recent television work with the Starz series Now Apocalypse, he has told stories that span the range of maturity and experience. Though it has been more than 10 years since his last film (White Bird in a Blizzard, 2014) I Want Your Sex is a welcome return to the big screen for a director who has grown as a filmmaker, without losing the youthful exuberance that make his films exciting and unique.

In a year that has already offered the dom-sub rom com Pillion, starring Henry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård, this is a subgenre with many stories to tell. While the general plot and great performances in IWYS give us plenty to enjoy, the script from Araki and Karley Sciortino delves into the generational divide between Gen X/Millennials and Gen Z, from the sex positive to the sex averse. Elliot broaches the subject with Minerva, with Apple, with Zap, and while Erika speaks in sweeping generalizations about the Gen Z fear of sex, Elliot finds that his peers all have very different views. In this, Araki and Sciortino at once validate the 20-something anxiety over sex and relationships while also acknowledging the broad range of attitudes and experiences. For a comedy about kinky sex, I Want Your Sex is surprisingly insightful and complex. 

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival where I Want Your Sex had its world premiere.