You’re in bed with Charli XCX but she just wants to study
IN BED WITH MINERVA: Elliot with his sexually unavailable girlfriend, played by Charli XCX
I like to think that modern pervs, at least, would be aware of these earlier benchmarks in kink culture even if some were born long after the original books were published. But maybe I’m taking too much for granted. Feel free to let me know!
But back to the opening scene of I Want Your Sex, in which the body floating in the pool is discovered by a young man wearing only a frilly pink bra and panties.
The young man is Elliot, who we find 91/2 weeks earlier (as promised!) in the apartment he shares with Apple (Chase Sui Wonders, below right), who is getting neither Elliot’s share of the rent money (because he has only just graduated and is still job-hunting) or, it later transpires, the kind of filthy sex with women she’d really like to have.
ELLIOT and flatmate Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), who really needs him to pay his half of the rent
Elliot is invited to an interview for an assistant position at the studio of successful artist Erika Tracy, and despite a somewhat faltering performance, finds himself given the job. But there are strings attached.
It quickly becomes clear that Erika’s interest in the young man is not entirely professional; in fact it is almost entirely sexual.
As conveyed by Olivia Wilde, Erika’s persona is reminiscent of Madonna in her Erotica album and Sex book era (1992): a powerful, successful and wealthy woman at the top of her game in a creative role and basically both able to demand, and accustomed to getting, anything she wants — including sexual submission from suitable candidates.
Of which Elliot is one, albeit grudgingly at first. After all, he does actually have a girlfriend — Minerva (played by Charli XCX in her blossoming second career as an actor). Elliot’s very much in love with Minerva, and would love her even more if she could find time out of her academic studies to have sex with him.
Charli does ‘aloof and sexually unavailable’ so convincingly for this role that I found it quite difficult to reconcile it with my preferred image of her — the one where she wears a lot of latex while performing on stage.
Anyway, Elliot finds himself part of Erika’s studio team, which is ‘handled’ by her queeny second-in-command Vikktor (with two ‘k’s, naturally).
One of Elliot’s first jobs with the rest of team is to chew pink bubblegum which must then be stuck carefully onto the massive outline drawing of some lady-parts on a studio wall.
Elliot is accompanied in this ernest group mastication exercise by fellow team member Zap (Mason Gooding), who has a very active gay social life and happily disparages Elliot for being straight because he has never sucked cock.
Elliot finds himself being called upon personally by Erika for various special tasks. These involve him being dominated by her in increasingly extravagant and profound ways — including being pegged with one of the aforementioned dildos. And he, erm, comes to love it.
ZAP ((Mason Gooding), Elliot’s gay team-mate at the art studio and also a very active online dater
Unfortunately he makes the category error of confusing loving it with loving her — so he could be heading for an ego-crushing rejection.
But that doesn’t mean he killed Erika. I mean, just because he was the one who claims to have found her body floating in the pool, and reported it to the police.
By the way, the pool incident occurred right after the opening of Erika’s big new art show, which didn’t go as well as she’d hoped for. Could she have drowned accidentally after consoling herself with way too much booze? Or had she even decided to take her own life?
Now about this body you claim to have found in the pool…
DETECTIVES Zola (Margaret Cho) and Zem (Johnny Knoxville) quiz Elliot about the body in the pool
Occasionally, the movie’s timeline flashes forward temporarily to find Elliott in a small windowless room being interrogated by two detectives — Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho). On the one hand, he seems like the obvious suspect if it turns out to be murder. But on the other hand… where’s the body?
Watch the movie to find out. I really enjoyed it, not least for its easy embrace of fetish and BDSM sensibilities alongside the director’s obvious affinity with matters gay.
ERIKA the interviewer: ‘a dominant lesbian in a straight woman’s body’ said one reviewer
I loved it for Olivia Wilde’s confident portrayal of the Madonna-like artist, which I saw somewhere described as a “dominant lesbian in a straight woman’s body” (well, mostly straight, I’d say).
I thought young Cooper Hoffman, as the newly graduated Elliot — a character of the
actor’s own age — got the tone of ‘regular guy plunged into a sexual fantasy world he could barely dream of’ just right.
And the rest of the cast all gave really good support. All of the characters felt rounded — more than the two-dimensional padding that supporting players sometimes have to be content to provide.
And an important contribution to this was the dialogue they all got to deliver, with enough breezy, snappy and snarky exchanges to keep the laughs coming.
I wasn’t bothered by views that in setting out to satirise the Los Angeles art scene or the sexual timidity of Gen Z-ers, Gregg Araki hadn’t quite hit his targets. As someone watching from outside both of those worlds, I have to say it worked fine for me.
I also wasn’t bothered by the assertion by some critics that I Want Your Sex is OK but doesn’t achieve ‘peak Araki’.
I think he’s created something here that could have a lot more mainstream appeal than some of the other films Araki buffs revere.
And members of the fetish and BDSM communities should definitely find much to enjoy here — as long as they’re not above occasionally laughing at themselves.
I Want Your Sex is showing in London and around the UK at Vue cinemas and other selected venues. This is an ‘18’ film and proof of age may be required.
BELOW: Director Gregg Araki with I Want You Sex poster art at a US promo event for the film
Tags: BDSM films, Comedy-Thrillers, Dominatrixes
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