I Want Your Sex (2026) is a racy romp directed by the legendary queer filmmaker Gregg Araki, co-written and produced alongside Karley Sciortino of Slutever internet infamy. Through this tale of a workplace romance (GONE WRONG) (GONE SEXUAL), the veteran freaks urge zoomers to fuck more—but not before taking stock of their own libidinous lifestyles.
For years, my own experience with sex remained in the realm of theory, too twitchy to make the leap to practice. I basked in the blue light of my phone as the internet magnified both my sexual curiosity and suspicion. At 15, I was more principled than I am at 25— I dutifully absorbed the sex-positive frameworks espoused by e-activists, mulling over the ethics of exotic acts all while remaining a kiss-less hug-less handhold-less virgin. Though my self-sanctimonious identity as a #Feminist prohibited me from ever venturing into the seedy alleyways of PornHub, the obscene was not totally absent from my diet.
My poison? “educational content” on YouTube that Trojan-horsed soft-porn to many a covert pervert. The documentary-style voyeurism of titles such as CLIT-ICAL THINKING and 10 SECRET VAGINA FACTS quelled my appetite for both eroticism and enlightenment. Through those late-night rendezvous, I was having my sex and keeping it too.
Amongst a sea of low-res vloggers like DaveyWavey and Laci Green that simply spoke to their screens, Sciortino’s high-budget docu-series Slutever shimmered like a beacon of light. The degenerates at Viceland allowed the host to open sorts of vaulted doors, those to Japanese hostess clubs, high-class dungeons and sex doll factories. Sciortino’s sexual journey was not just directed inwards, but pierced through the upper-echelons of perversity. To me, she’s certified sex nerd royalty.
Like Araki’s technicolour depictions of angsty punks in 90s LA, Slutever too is emblematic of a time and place. On the internet of the 2010s, when ‘choice’ feminism was all the rage and neat myths about sexual empowerment still seemed believable, there was no bigger F-U to the patriarchy than being a leather and latex clad dominatrix. As YouTube’s content restrictions narrowed in real-time, as the en vogue corsetry laced tighter, my contact with the real of the body and its ample sensuousness grew obscure and distorted.
This game of disclosure continues in I Want Your Sex, which unfolds like a crime procedural. The film opens with an unmemorable detective duo interrogating Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) about his relationship with his former employer, contemporary artist Erika Tracy. The SheEO, played by Olivia Wilde, graces every shot in full femme fatale regalia—her winged liner is sharp like a dagger, her lips red like blood. Much like the performative aspect of her art, her sexual role as a dominatrix bleeds into her being—nobody, including the artist, knows where the act ends. Elliot, by contrast, sports crumpled-up graphic tees and dishevelled hair as he ungracefully trips into furniture and stumbles over his words. Far from inhabiting a character, he fails to fully inhabit himself.
Elliot and Erika’s relationship is introduced to us through the punitive language of the police investigation, which is not unlike the language I first used to think and talk about sex. Filtered through the limiting discourse of Victim v. Villain, both pleasure and power are rendered ornamental. As the detectives repeatedly emphasize, Erika’s disproportionate influence over Elliot as his older and wealthier employer must be reckoned with. And though Elliot doesn’t disagree, he insists upon the richness of his pleasure and fantasies— the kind of stuff that is less amenable to language. I was pleasantly surprised by the film’s delicate balancing of these two truths—neither is shafted for the other.
Still, I exited the theatre with a lot left to desire.
If I close my eyes, I can conjure the opening sequence to Araki’s coming of age film Nowhere (1997), where a young James Duvall (who makes a fan-pleasing cameo in I Want Your Sex) masturbates in the shower—the steam glistens his soft skin as his tender moans mount to ecstacy. When the orgasm finally comes, it is received like a revelation. Despite the fantastical element of discovery, sensuality is wholly absent from Erika and Elliot’s relationship. The intensity of their sex life is conjured through the costumes they don and the toys they use—a magenta strap-on dildo, a severe black paddle and a silky satin blindfold. To my dismay, the sensuousness of skin is traded in for lifeless objects. Here, I cannot help but think of another recent release, Harry Lighton’s Pillion (2026) that also eschews sensuality in favour of extremity.
This inertia presents itself in Erika’s art too, where it takes the form of trite transgressions like a painting that simply reads FUCK, or a king-sized vagina crafting using chewed-up gum. Like the art, the sex in the movie may be vulgar but it is only a farce. I am left yearning for the real deal.
Early in her seduction, Erika taunts Elliot about his prudish cohort: “the men in your generation would rather watch porn than go out there and have sex!” But Elliot is frustrated by his frigid girlfriend Minerva’s (Charli XCX) constant rejection, causing his imagination to tack on large cartoon breasts onto her covered chest. In another scene, he rewinds the tape on his early interactions with Erika to insert his own exaggerated fantasies. When he struggles to cum during perfunctory sex, he imagines a hyper-real Erika whose poreless skin glows under studio light, her golden hair perfectly windswept by an electric fan.
Though I found such interjections of Elliot’s pornographic imagination to be formally intriguing, these sequences are not pushed nearly far enough. For one, these fantasies do not meaningfully depart from the film’s reality and besides, the duo is uninterested in issuing insights on modern masculinity (which, to be fair, has reached a point of saturation). This is further evidenced by the fact Elliot arrives at his compromising position as a submissive man in a seemingly uncomplicated fashion— the real subversive inquiry of the film is water off a duck’s back.
The divide in I Want Your Sex manifests over generational rather than gendered lines. In their naked depiction of Erika, a provocateur past her prime, Araki and Sciortino reveal that they are not afraid of being the butt of the joke. They approach this project as weathered masters, doing what they’ve done best with an added layer of witty and incisive self-reflection. While their frustrations with artist-as-celebrity and the contemporary art landscape read as sincere rather than overwrought, they ultimately concede to the media machine that birthed their stardom.
When all is said and done, a tearful Elliot reproaches the Machiavellian celebrity: “you want me to be grateful for the fact that you used me?” An insolent Erika affirms his question in a matter-of-fact manner. The adversity has bestowed upon Elliot an inimitable wealth: a story to commodify and sell. Dutifully, the zoomer picks up the podcast mic: ● REC
