Nolan Kelly at Artforum:
LIKE A PATRON SAINT or a public servant, Gregg Araki goes where he is needed. In the early 1990s, during the abandonment and demonization of gay men at the height of the AIDS crisis, his movies added pathos and depth to the extremely limited depictions of queer life on-screen, while simultaneously employing a gallows humor that refused to honor the flag-waving optimism of the burgeoning gay-rights movement. His films emphasized bisexuality and nonmonogamy in the 2000s, celebrating the unfixed work of self-discovery during a time when same-sex conformity with traditional partnerships had become the next obvious political milestone. And in the 2010s, as Pride got corporate and queerness grew into an acronym long enough to include (and compartmentalize) almost everyone, Araki doubled down on his nonconformist bent with Now Apocalypse (2019), a television series in which a band of horny teens unite across the Kinsey Scale to unmask a cabal of reptilian overlords. Now, with a sex recession raging unabated among the young, and involuntary celibacy treated as a public health issue, Araki has reemerged with I Want Your Sex, a mirthful masterpiece every bit as libidinal as the title makes it sound. His first movie in twelve years finds the doyen of New Queer Cinema charting a refreshing course, with work that unabashedly sets its sights on his broadest audience yet and attempts not only to entertain but to edify. Araki’s latest has been made expressly to give succor to 2026’s most sexually stymied population: straight people. It cannot reach theaters soon enough.
more here.
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