“I’m a slave to this vagina.”

Story: Recent fine arts grad Elliott gets a job with pop-art sensation Erika Tracy, and life is pretty sweet. But when Erika decides Elliott is gonna be her sub-du-jour? Things go from sweet, to smutty, to seriously fucked up. Ah, to be a young twenty-something…and not be him.

Genre I’d put it in: Avant-garde Comedies
Release Date: 2026
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Original

Gotta say: Anybody else still completely wrecked by Obsession? Well I’ve got the antidote right here, and it’s a gas. Sex feels like a GenZ Secretary, with whiffs of Sunset Boulevard and the cotton-candy aesthetic of Willie Wonka on crack. But y’know, smutty. And I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Margaret Cho! Johnny Knoxville! Daveed Diggs! Charlie XCX! And The Long Walk‘s Cooper Hoffman! (Yes, I’m still obsessed with that film. Thanks for asking.) This cast is art house craziness with a wild rock-n-roll vibe that hooked me in immediately. Director Greg Araki digs into the differences between sexual intimacy, relationships, and true connection. Elliott’s relationship with girlfriend Minerva is empty of any emotional intimacy, and their sex life is on the rocks as well. So when Elliott’s boss Erika shows him how much fun all the colors of the sexual rainbow can be, he’s immediately smitten. But soon that shows a similar hollowness. Sex seems to urge viewers to both be free to live a life they want to live. But still urges you to keep in mind that hedonism only gets you so far in terms of true fulfillment.

With a writing assist from Karley Sciortino, this film gets the down and dirty parts down pat. Araki and Sciortino blend a vibrant, nonstop sensibility with characters that show just enough of their deeper layers to ground the chaos around them. Even the seemingly out-of-control Erika has moments where she’s mask-off, showing the confused human within. That’s thanks to a frenetic performance by Olivia Wilde, perfecting the stereotype of the self-involved artist. Wilde adds a touch of cluelessness to Erika, someone who’s been knowingly spouting so much artsy double-speak that even she’s starting to believe it. There’s so much going on behind those eyes, it’s impossible to look away.

Balancing out Erika’s chaos is Cooper Hoffman’s Everyman Elliott, a fine arts grad that’s still normcore at his heart. Elliott sticks out like a sore thumb in his J. Crew essentials, when everyone else at the art studio is trying desperately to evoke careless idiosyncrasy. As with his work in Walk and Licorice Pizza, he’s a loveable mess, thisclose to becoming a schlub, but is still young enough to make it feel a willful choice, rather than a rut. Unlike those prior films, Hoffman gets to go completely off-leash here, and a montage of Erika and Elliott’s early sexual shenanigans is hilarious and endearing thanks to his earnest portrayal. Special shout-out to Mason Gooding as Elliott’s coworker Zap, a trust fun baby who’s more interested in WeHo fun than the art district. Gooding drops bon mots effortlessly, and yet comes off as a guy you’d actually want to be friends with.

Remember when I said this film has a whiff of Sunset Boulevard to it? Yeah, as all these sexual hijinks and desperate attempts at trying to figure out life are happening, there’s also a murder investigation. As the story unspools, Detectives Zem and Zola (Knoxville and Cho; I’m assuming Araki has a hard-on for names that start with Z) try to get to the bottom of the mystery. As this is more comedy than thriller (much more so), things wrap up with a flourish, and while we don’t get answers to what happened to everyone during a two, then four, year time jump? The ending is just crazy enough to have had me shaking my head and fondly saying “oh Sex. You silly bear.”

I’d say you can catch this one on streaming – MUBI seems to be gearing up to stream it – but if you’re close to an arthouse theater that’s showing it? You know that theater that has crazy cocktails and fun snacks? Grab your best weird artsy/theater friends and go. Hooting and hollering with like-minded cool kids will add a touch of shared whimsy to the festivities.

#Protip: If any of this whetted your appetite for more films in this style, might I suggest digging into New Queer Cinema films? It’s been around for a while, but this descriptive is still relatively unknown to a lot of folks. A few of my faves to get you started: The Boys in the Band, Dorian Gray (any iteration, honestly), Groupies the film, House/Hausu, Caravaggio, and Performance. But I’m not the boss of you.