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I Want Your Sex, baby. Lust-filled, naughty, and carefree, the titillating rom-com bucks convention and thrusts into an off-limits, BDSM-fueled office relationship where anything goes. The audience collectively gives a pleasure-filled gasp.
A movie that is oddly mainstream—mostly—and yet one you should probably not take your churchgoing grandparents to, I Want Your Sex is a deliciously fun and seducingly tight [90 minutes] flick boasting two great performances by Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman. Wilde absolutely spanks in this one—literally and figuratively—plunging into her role as a seductive, give-zero-fucks boss who makes her middling underling do all kinds of things you may or may not be able to imagine. From her outfits to her scorching smirk-and-stare, she’s on fire. This is her second great performance of the year following The Invite, which was another rom-com of sorts that toys with “out of the norm” sexual practices. Is Wilde telling us something?
Wilde may raise the heads, but Hoffman is phenomenal here too. He gives a subtly unsubtle comedic performance that plays off his costar extremely well.
As for the movie, it’s quite good: fun, funny, and flirtatious with a few doses of scandalous. Writer/director Gregg Araki uses his 90 minutes efficiently, tangling intrigue and humor and drama in an orgy of genres. It does give off whiffs of unnecessary indie foreplay—a few cartoon bits are included for no reason whatsoever, for one—that hold it back from being next tier entertainment. It also feels like a film without an ending; while how it concludes is fine, it appears that Araki just got bored after a while and faked his finish. I mean, it happens.
The one element I Want Your Sex prematurely discharges is the best friend. While Araki thankfully avoids the “my best friend was the person for me all along” trope, Chase Sui Wonders is hilarious in this movie and is a key player in the funniest scene of the entire movie. And then her character is dropped like a used condom. I spent much of the latter part of the movie hoping she’d come back into play, because by that point her dynamic with Hoffman was more interesting to me than the one with Wilde.
I Want Your Sex won’t make you scream orgasmically, but it’s a confidently told, funny, and slyly sexy rom-com that’s worth diving under the covers for.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
