According to other generations, Gen Z has many issues it needs to address — Respect, communication, anxiety, and screen time, just to name a few. There are whole books written on the subject, like “The Anxious Generation,” that discuss the overall mental health decline of young people over the past 15 or so years. With heavy hitters like social media, advancing tech, and the pandemic, some people will say it takes a lot of therapy and healing to “fix” these problems. In the eyes of Gregg Araki, however, the solution is much simpler. Gen Z doesn’t need better mental health; they need to get off their phones, get out of their heads, and start fucking each other. This is the basis of Araki’s first film in twelve years, I Want Your Sex, starring rising nepo-baby Cooper Hoffman and my Sundance 2026 MVP Olivia Wilde.
I’ll admit, this is my first foray into Araki’s filmography, but boy, did this make me want to see everything else he has to offer. Being on the ‘lighter side,’ this is potentially the best entry into Araki’s filmography. I Want Your Sex is the perfect blend of honest conversations about sex with dark humor and over-the-top absurdness that I love. Hoffman plays Elliot, a glorified intern for Wilde’s titan of the art industry, Erika Tracy. It doesn’t take long for them to begin a dom-sub relationship that becomes Elliot’s only real motivation in life. Hoffman is charming and energetic as always, but Wilde stole the show.
I had the benefit of seeing Wilde in two very different performances at Sundance, this and her next directorial feature, The Invite. In I Want Your Sex, she plays the most confident, assured character in the story, taking what she wants with command and exuding power in every moment. The contrast with Erika Tracy and her repressed, almost-stuttering Angela in The Invite shows off a ton of range, and her dominating presence elevates this film in a way I wasn’t expecting.
Araki extracts solid supporting performances out of Mason Gooding, a fellow employee with Elliot, and Chase Sui Wonders, Elliot’s roommate, as well as some smaller laugh-out-loud moments from Daveed Diggs and Charli XCX (who was part of three films at Sundance this year!). Gooding serves as a good sounding board for Elliot as he navigates his relationship with Erika, while Wonders’ zany roommate gets a lot more action in the third act, which is absolutely incredible. Each performance bounces uniquely off Hoffman, who brings a modern spin to his Gary Valentine character from Licorice Pizza (2021). Here, he’s much more entranced with Tracy, but that essence of codependency is still there. He plays the aimless twenty-something perfectly, focusing on the one thing that brings him joy rather than doing anything productive to improve his life or other relationships.
While I don’t necessarily agree with Araki that sex is the ultimate answer to all of Gen Z’s problems, I do think that finding more ways to genuinely connect with others, rather than isolating in fear, would help in their quest to overcome anxiety. I haven’t had it half as bad as many younger than me, but it took me a long time to be able to order a pizza over the phone by myself. As absurd as the film is, Araki taps into the way my generation and younger ones interact with one another, and it’s absolutely detrimental to our development as functioning members of society.
I Want Your Sex is a fun, irreverent ride with endearing and ridiculous performances from Hoffman and Wilde. Its dark humor and outlandish sex scenes turn the crazy meter up to 10 at times, but they never fully detract from the always-engaging script by Araki and Karley Sciortino. This will definitely be a tough sell for some theaters, but I’m hopeful that this will get the theatrical release it deserves after high praise out of Sundance.
Review Courtesy of Cameron K. Ritter
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Lacey Terrell