EIFF 2026: I Want Your Sex
Gregg Araki is back with a new film exploring the relationship between an artist and her much younger employee; unfortunately, the sex in this sex comedy has a mechanical music video sheen
Is it subversive, in a post-Epstein era, to make a film about workplace sexual harassment that masquerades as a sexual coming of age and ends happily? Probably, and it's one way Gregg Araki perpetuates his brand of queer enfant terrible. In films like Mysterious Skin, The Doom Generation and The Living End, he has tackled difficult topics like the AIDs crisis, child sex abuse and murder, all while simultaneously crafting a map of desire for queer people. And yet, in I Want Your Sex, which has the hallmark mischief and Looney Tunes asides of Araki’s usual sensibility – Charli xcx as a frigid and studious neuropsychologist called Minerva is quite hilarious – it falls flat.
Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is the nice guy-coded sex-starved assistant to staunch and dominating artist Erika (Olivia Wilde). Her work is all about sex, power and control, which she delivers monologues about in the manner of a TED talk. Their sextuationship is described in flashback by Elliot to cops in an interrogation room (we find out why at the crux of the film) followed by a BDSM montage that is at least original – Erika spanking Elliot in women’s underwear as he calls himself a whore, Elliot crawling on all fours in a pig mask, and Elliot being penetrated by a dildo (there are no safe words in Erika’s lexicon). Yet their relationship never deepens, and their chemistry feels more like colleagues than two taboo lovers. Erika never breaks out of the mould of cold-blooded statue. Hoffman’s role as sub-puppy seeking dom-mommy works well – he plays naïve as if second nature – but the two never seem believable.
Araki excels when he allows real humour to punctuate the zaniness – threesomes on screen have rarely been as awkward and hilarious as the one between Erika, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), and Elliot, with the latter Zillennials turning up wasted due to their stage fright. Araki’s films are about sex but not always sexy, normalising and exuding a camp eroticness that shows sex in all its wacky, erotic, silly glory. But here, sex is a mechanical music video sheen, a topic of obsession everyone is talking about seemingly more than they’re having or even enjoying. Maybe then, this is an Araki film for the online generation
Released 28 Aug by Black Bear; certificate 15
I Want Your Sex had its UK premiere at EIFF on 17 Aug, with additional screenings on 18 & 19 Aug