Review: Olivia Wilde rules Araki's BDSM comedy 'I Want Your Sex'

Olivia Wilde plays a famous artist and provocateur who initiates a sex-only relationship with a younger employee in "I Want Your Sex," a playfully provocative comedy from New Queer Cinema pioneer Gregg Araki that opens in theaters Friday. It earns three stars out of four.

Wilde's Erika Tracy may be the most quotable fictional female executive since Miranda Priestly "that's all-ed" her way into film history. The comparison is odd — Priestly belongs to a buttoned-up, PG-13 world, while Erika is often topless, in bondage or carrying a sex object around as an accessory — but Erika shares the withering glare, the commanding presence and the killer timing. It is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role.

The film lives and dies on Erika's plausibility. She could easily have been an eccentric cartoon. Nothing here is taken terribly seriously, but the audience has to buy the outrageous things she says, and care at least a little about how and why she ends up floating naked, unconscious and face-down in her pool. If you are going to reference "Sunset Boulevard," you might as well go big.

The noirish mystery is not really the point. Araki, who shares writing credits with Karley Sciortino, wants to talk about sex and the well-documented lack of it among members of Generation Z — sharply, humorously and outlandishly. His vehicle is a dom-sub arrangement between an employer and her younger employee, Elliot, played by Cooper Hoffman. It was all consensual, he insists repeatedly to the detectives interviewing him, played by Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho. It also ruins his life, at least for a while.

Elliot is awkward, an unlikely pick. He lives with his best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) and has a girlfriend, Minerva (Charli xcx). No one seems to be having sex: when Elliot proposes celebrating his new job at Erika's gallery, Minerva complains that they just did it 11 days ago. His fantasies soon turn real, and messy — blood, tears, betrayal and maybe murder.

The film is self-consciously garish, an over-the-top satire of the art world, with supporting turns from Daveed Diggs and Mason Gooding. Wonders is terrific, a ball of neuroses and repression. "Sex is everything," Erika says. "It's also nothing."

It reaches no profound conclusion, and isn't trying to. Mostly it is a platform for Wilde, an actor Hollywood often just wanted to be hot, ignoring her intelligence and comedic prowess. It would pair naturally with her own directorial effort, "The Invite."

"I Want Your Sex," a Magnolia Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "graphic nudity, strong sexual content and pervasive language." Running time: 90 minutes.