"I Want Your Sex" Review: Gregg Araki Skewers Gen Z's Prudishness with a Wild Comedy

Gregg Araki, an indie-cinema legend for decades now, has built a career on defiantly challenging our sexual moral codes. In his latest film, 'I Want Your Sex,' he takes aim this time at the supposedly prudish Gen Z — and thanks to one of the best casts of his career, the result is quite funny.

Childish, scattered Elliot (a pitch-perfect Cooper Hoffman) has just finished school and is stuck in a relationship in which sex almost never happens, and when it does, it's a total yawn. But his bedroom life takes a perverse turn once he lands a job at a "hipster warehouse": there, Elliot falls under the spell of iconic art provocateur Erika Tracy (a magnificent Olivia Wilde).

Wilde's Erika is a force who manages to be both repellent and irresistible throughout the film; Araki's humor is sharpest in the stretches where Elliot tries to figure out his own desires. A cast that includes Charli xcx, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville keeps the film's odd energy balanced.

The 90-minute film swings between erotic comedy and thriller, occasionally trusting its own provocations a bit too much. Still, the ending, where Araki makes a case for vulnerability rather than openness, pushes the film beyond a simple shock comedy: a surprisingly sweet story about people willing to truly be seen by one another.