Olivia Wilde Kinky Thriller ‘I Want Your Sex’ Heats Up Sundance

“I Want Your Sex,” an erotic thriller starring Olivia Wilde as a sexually assured artist who embarks on a sadomasochistic relationship along with her gallery assistant, bought Sundance’s pulse racing on Friday night time. Cooper Hoffman performs Elliot, the sub to Wilde’s dom in Gregg Araki’s latest piece of boundary-pushing provocation, one that Sundance programming director Kim Yutani dubbed a “return to form” for the filmmaker in her introductory remarks.

Both stars go for it — baring all in a relationship that is kinky, however also tender at occasions. Not in a standard approach, after all. Wilde’s character, Erika Tracy, opens a sexual Pandora’s box for Hoffman, one that comes with ball gags, stilettos, whips, chains, and a cornucopia of dildos and strap-ons. There’s even a disastrous threesome that goes comically off the rails.

When Araki heard that Wilde was focused on playing Erika, he made it clear what could be required.

“We had a gathering, and I just said, ‘you know, to do this part, you gotta just not give a fuck, and just want to just fucking take the plunge,’” Araki recalled during a post-screening Q&A. “‘Because I don’t wish to compromise it. I don’t wish to water it down.’ And she said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Wilde said she never regarded again after signing as much as play the position of an artist whose swagger masks her dwindling self-confidence.

“I was just so excited by Gregg’s enthusiasm for the medium, for the process,” Wilde said. “I wish more people made movies like [Gregg]. You just said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get cool people together who want to tell a story, and let’s just do it. And it doesn’t have to be a whole thing, and it doesn’t have to feel like this corporate project. It has to just come from the heart.’ And I wanted to be a part of something like that.”

Hoffman, who turned heads in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza,” wasn’t certain he was proper for the a part of a bumbling boy toy. Araki was drawn to Hoffman because he reminded him of Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” and thought he may carry the same nebbish depth to the half.

“I honestly didn’t think I’d get cast,” Hoffman admitted. “I just threw my hat in the ring and kept getting closer and closer. And then they said I got the job. And I was like, ‘Ah, shit. I gotta go do this.’ And I’m very happy I did.”

On the pink carpet previous to the premiere, Wilde told Variety that Gen Z needs to see less intercourse in films and TV because they “don’t want to see inauthenticity anymore.”

“The way that sex has been portrayed in film for a long time hasn’t been particularly realistic,” Wilde said.