Olivia Wilde is having quite the moment. After directing and starring in the hugely acclaimed The Invite, she resists the temptation to double duty here, leaving directing duties to Gregg Araki, who has something of a cult following thanks to his 90s offerings dubbed the “Teenage Apocalypse trilogy”.
This leaves her free to focus on playing contemporary artist Erika Tracy, who specialises in avant-garde, sexually explicit artwork. Her body is seen floating in a pool at the beginning of the movie, in a nod to the famous opening scene of director Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard. Much like that iconic flick, the story is told mainly in flashback, taking us back nine and a half weeks, where she embarks on a BDSM relationship with her 23-year-old assistant Elliot (played by Cooper Hoffman). The timeframe itself is a playful nod to the 1986 erotic drama 9½ Weeks, which starred Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.
Elliot’s girlfriend Minerva (popstar Charli XCX) is largely uninterested in sex, leaving him vulnerable to Erika’s advances.
She takes him down a rabbit hole of sexual experimentation and awakening until the lines between their personal and professional lives begin to blur when she uses videos of their encounters in her exhibition, causing him huge distress and ultimately leading us back to the opening scene.
While the subject matter may sound titillating, the quirky way Araki handles it ensures it never slips into sleazy territory.
This includes drawing on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with surreal animated gags and characters rendered with exaggerated, Jessica Rabbit-style proportions to mirror the heightened, hyper-sexualised fantasies of the characters.
In the hands of a less assured leading actress, this could have failed miserably, but Wilde’s well-balanced portrayal of the complex Erika keeps it engaging for all the right reasons.
But despite the abundance of kinky content, this is much more of a bawdy dramedy and is lighter, less dark and far more playful than Kidman’s offering.
Quirky, fun and extremely engaging, this is the sort of film that will have audiences talking for all the right reasons despite the subject matter.
I Want Your Sex is in cinemas August 28.
