In the dog days of summer, there’s no better place to escape the heat than inside the air-conditioned paradise of a movie theater. Perhaps you’ll even find yourself there with a romantic companion, their uncovered leg grazing against yours as you both tuck your feet in to make room for the annoying person who came in late and is now trying to find their seat in the dark. Your skin touches theirs, trading the dewy moisture of perspiration. How electric; erotic, even. For just a second, the spark between you two is so powerful that it melts away every care outside of that place and time. 

And then, your film — a romantic comedy or dramedy that seems like the perfect date movie — begins, and you’re quickly reminded that no amount of desire can remove you from the context of the world you exist in. The fantasy comes crashing down. Even the fluffy rom-coms are steeped in real life’s anxieties about the social and political, the wars and the wages. But the passion was there; it was real. Maybe the moment was even more charged by the knowledge, somewhere in the back of your head, that these unexpected, carnal joys arrive far less often when so much of our time is spent just trying to make it from one day to the next. Sex, even just the lingering thought of it, can feel like an extravagance. I’d wager that’s a big part of why this summer’s theatrical slate has been so overtly horny: Everyone is trying to figure out how sex fits into this strange modern life.

(Nicole Rivelli /Universal Pictures) Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner in “One Night Only”

No film makes that more clear than Will Gluck’s new romantic comedy, “One Night Only,” where, brace yourself here, premarital sex has been outlawed except for one outrageous annual holiday. Think “The Purge,” but for sex — “The Urge” was right there, but whatever — and just as dystopian, though with quite a bit more charm and fewer dead bodies. In the movie, unlucky-in-love strangers Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) find their paths repeatedly crossing during the 12-hour sex purge window, as both of them seek partners to get it on with. We know the pair will inevitably end up together. But it’s their journey and all the bizarre autocratic municipal rules they have to dance around that make “One Night Only” a clever, peculiar and head-scratching standout from the rom-com crowd.

“One Night Only” also happens to be the discourse darling du jour, with some suggesting that its unusual fusion of genre tropes and political overtones is an insidious embrace of our backslide toward fascism. Indeed, Owen and Allie quibble less about living under a punitive abstinence edict than one might expect, and the film doesn’t have nearly as much fun with, or fury for, the civic regime as it should. 

But like this summer’s “The Invite” and “I Want Your Sex,” Gluck’s film encourages a compelling and multilayered dialogue about the role of sex and intimacy amid terrifying political fury. How can we find the joy in all of this? Is, say, one hour of fleeting sexual pleasure enough to combat the 14-some others that we spend in waking dread? The solutions won’t, ahem, come easily, but there’s really no more appropriate time to ask these questions and search for their answers than summer, when the heat makes us alternate between f*cking furiously and f*cking furious.

Curiously, “One Night Only” is more of the former than the latter. As the film’s title card tells viewers, the movie takes place three years into “the mandate,” as the characters refer to it. “It’s been . . . a lot,” the card continues. Opaque and jokey as it is, this is the only bit of tangible backstory the film provides about the average American’s response to the forbiddance of fornication. Though a few ideological asides do provide some additional color as the night goes on. Owen’s mother (Molly Ringwald) and her partner (LeVar Burton) get into a spat about the mandate’s legislation — “That’s what happens with single-issue voters!”; “No one voted for it, it was passed by Congress!” — that soon turns hot and heavy. 

It’s a silly but reasonably shrewd way to depict how many of us have landed at some level of complacency in a political atmosphere where, most of the time, we have little direct control and negligible impact over the laws that dictate our lives, no matter how oppressive. We bicker about them, but the majority of Americans aren’t in the streets protesting. As neo-fascist as the country’s become, we still live under capitalism, and the ability to regularly protest is somewhat a luxury. But, then again, so is living in America at all (at least to some extent), even when it’s awful. 

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.
Sign up here

I realize I’m probably giving Gluck and screenwriter Travis Braun too much credit when I say these are the kinds of questions they wanted viewers to ask. But I find “One Night Only” to be a far more interesting film because it doesn’t answer everything up front or take the blanket optimist’s route. These characters know that the mandate is awful, but they’ve found screwed-up ways to live with it. Anyone who says that doesn’t reflect the modern American way has their head in the sand. And frankly, a film as pleasant but ephemeral as this isn’t going to push democracy any further into the dark.

What “One Night Only” makes so apparent is that our personal pleasure is at stake in this environment. Constant federal surveillance and deeply rooted institutional corruption are simply not sexy, even if being cognizant and fearful of them absolutely is. (Caring is still hot!) And I’ve always said that there is no better place to work out thorny, complex ideas — the kind that are sometimes difficult to devote time and energy to amid the stress of our day-to-day lives — than at the movies. 

Gluck’s film arrives on the heels of a pair of sweltering summer peers that already laid quite a bit of thematic groundwork in the sex space for audiences to traverse. The stickiest of them all, Olivia Wilde’s terrific chamber dramedy, “The Invite,” just landed on VOD after steadily working its way up from limited to wide theatrical engagements — sort of like cinematic release-schedule foreplay. The film navigates ideas large and small, moving between the casual intimacies, or lack thereof, that make up long-term relationships, and the baseline human carnality that points us toward sex even when those relationships aren’t working. 

(A24) Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in “The Invite”

Put simply: It’s more difficult to maintain the true intimacy than it’s ever been. The prevalence of dating apps and our ability to follow someone else’s every move on social media have zapped the honeymoon period’s lifespan. Throw in demanding jobs, expensive rugs, rapidly changing social mores, the desire to start or maintain a healthy relationship with your neighbors, and the nagging feeling that everyone in the world is having sex but you, and life gets overwhelming fast. Sex shuffles to the back burner. But though the flame might be small, it remains lit. And “The Invite” attests that it’s never too late to dial up the heat, so long as we’re honest about what we want and what we need from our partners. 

“The Invite” is all about communication and open conversation. And that’s a critical strength in both relationships and in the ways we watch and digest art. That this summer has been replete with dialogues not only about our sexual neuroses and compulsions, but real, steadfast love in all its forms, is a sure sign that love and sex are on our minds more than they have been in a few decades. Much like the influx of grief-laden horror movies that followed the 2016 election, one can trace our preoccupation with intimacy back to political rot. Our government directs so much of our lives that it’s impossible to remove its influence completely. Now, we’ve moved past grieving the lost hope and have the chance to create our own using the spark of romance and physical connection.

(Magnolia Pictures) Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in “I Want Your Sex”

As Gregg Araki’s playful comedy “I Want Your Sex” asserts, crafting the transient delights of the flesh into something stable and meaningful will take some trial and error, perhaps even some sacrifice. We’re living in a moment where people can easily choose to void sex from their lives or pursue it as a ritualistic part of their existence, and the space in the middle is murky and treacherous. If you have questions about sex and where it fits into your life, Araki’s ardent message is to explore them. The answers may come with regret or heartbreak, but they may also come with glorious satisfaction and unbelievable revelations. More often, the resulting discoveries will sit somewhere in between those two emotional polarities. We can’t live our lives to the extreme all the time, but we can do ourselves a favor and become better acquainted with exactly what we want and how to get it. 

That’s the glorious thing about going to the cinema: You’re bound to leave any movie with both questions and answers. Occasionally, one such question might be, “Does this movie covertly support fascism by making totalitarian sex mandates cute and manageable?” And those are queries that must be addressed because, whether we like it or not, even dystopian rom-coms might point us in the right — or even new — direction. The federal government certainly isn’t trying to orient us toward a brighter, more consistently pleasurable future. Why not take matters into our own hands? Or better yet, put those hands on someone we love and care for, even if only for a night.

The post “One Night Only” and the summer of rom-com sex talk appeared first on Salon.com.

Are you having sex? Do you want to be? 

These days, there are a million different possible answers to either question. Our culture has confused sex — a relatively uncomplicated, biological thing — with desire, which is an entirely different, much more complex can of worms just waiting to be opened. While the two frequently meet one another on the bed, on the floor or in a back alleyway behind that dive bar on Cherry Street after a few well-tequilas, both of these things are their own animals. It’s act versus thought, performance versus feeling. And yet, sex and desire have become irrevocably intertwined in our modern age, like two sweaty bodies, tangled together, realizing halfway through the deed that they don’t actually have as much in common as they initially thought.

In his first feature film in 12 years, “I Want Your Sex,” veteran counterculture director and perennial cool guy Gregg Araki is looking to have some fun in the technicolor midpoint where sex and desire meet. Sex has played a major role throughout Araki’s filmography, but never in quite such explicit terms as this. His characters — impulsive adolescents and young adults, slicing through their disaffection with sharp bursts of hormonal momentum — typically experience sex as a product of their furious youth. In their eyes, it’s an act of heady rebellion, more in line with the drugs and crime that permeate these underground, nihilistic worlds than it is with true romantic intimacy. So for Araki to dispose of all that to home in on sex itself, rather than building his characters and their worlds around it, there must be a good reason. 

(Magnolia Pictures) Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in “I Want Your Sex”

In short: There are plenty. The ’90s-era nihilism that threaded so many of Araki’s films has taken a hard slant toward technological despondency. Many young people act as though life begins and ends with the digital ecosystem. And even if that fact might make you depressed, scrolling will deplete one’s cynicism until it’s replaced by another attention-grabbing post. The simple fact of the matter is that, with so much time spent solitary and online, there’s less time for sex — or even the possibility of it. 

And yet, sex (or at least the implication of it) is everywhere. OnlyFans is its own viable economy, with some users raking in millions per year from people who want to live the fantasy through a screen. Manufactured eroticism not only pays the bills but stops the scroll. And, of course, there’s the fact that anyone in the world can access hundreds of terabytes of porn in two measly seconds. It used to be that, if you wanted sex, you had to be forward about it, seek it out to some degree. Now, the proliferation of sex and sexuality has resulted in an ironic prudishness among digital natives, who, as a result of growing up with sex quite literally in the palm of their hands, abstain from intercourse and all the lessons and joy it has to offer. And it’s that reserve that Araki aims at with “I Want Your Sex.” 

Yet, for a film with such a bold, George Michael-ripping title, “I Want Your Sex” is curiously unerotic. The characters have sex, sure, but their coitus is so instantly excessive it veers on silly. But that’s also the kind of frisky fun Araki wants his viewers to remember, the outrageous sexual dynamics that are the byproduct of our wildest adventures — exploits that don’t always begin with carnal intentions. By steeping his film in modern hypersexuality, Araki fashions a humorous how-to guide on finding real, memorable sexual connection in a world where everything is designed to be sexy, but isn’t actually stimulating.

And if anyone knows stimulating, it’s hotshot mixed media artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde, in her second hoot-and-holler role this summer), who’s made a name for herself in the Los Angeles art scene with a dedication to provocation. Her work is suggestive and boundary-pushing, and she’s exactly the kind of person that neurotic Gen Z art scene sycophant Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) would love to work for. After a chemistry-rich interview in her office, Erika hires Elliot on the spot — strange, considering his complete lack of experience and the spate of promising applicants that preceded him in the interview process. But Elliot doesn’t question it. Only later, when he’s tasked with chewing gum to stick onto the outline of a massive portrait of a vulva, does he learn that Erika has a habit of sleeping with her interns.

This piece of gossip soon begins to cloud Elliot’s life and better judgement. His girlfriend, the uptight med student Minerva (Charli xcx, speaking in an accent no one’s ever heard before, with a name no one’s had in 60 years — brilliant), is as cold in the bedroom as she is in the operating room. But Elliot also has no idea how to verbalize his desires. He’s of a generation that overthinks and underperforms. That is, until a wide-ranging chat with Erika in her home results in a proposition: Erika would like to enter into a consensual, primarily physical boss-employee relationship with her inferior, and use their inverse power dynamic to rock Elliot’s world: leashes, S&M, dildos, spanking, the works. But Erika calls the shots. If she says it’s over, it’s over. And there’s nothing like a suspicious, sudden disappearance to pull the plug on a burgeoning sexual connection.

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.
Sign up here

Araki’s screenplay, written alongside his “Now Apocalypse” series co-writer Karley Sciortino, hops back and forth between the time before Erika’s vanishing and immediately after. Her disappearance is mystifying and arousing — for both Elliot and the police. Elliot is abruptly without his sensual supervisor, and his loss is seismic. Left to his own devices with a new sexual skillset, yet still pining for his boss, Elliot is unsure of how to move forward. And it’s this impasse where Araki fleshes out his clever, if not entirely unique, ideas about the innate limits of the libido.

For as much handwringing as there has been about Gen Z’s attitudes toward sex — and whether they’re having it at all, which is debatable — Araki is careful not to indict the youth. He is, after all, famously still babyfaced at 66, a physical spriteliness mirrored in his bright visual aesthetics and effervescent directorial tone. Araki is very much in touch with what young people enjoy and how they operate. He simply wants more for them. Youth is wasted on the young, after all, and Araki’s mission with “I Want Your Sex” is to make it patently clear that the clock will continue to tick whether they choose to get physical or not. So why not give it a try?

(Magnolia Pictures) Charli xcx and Cooper Hoffman in “I Want Your Sex”

Araki posits that it’s fear holding people back; not just the fear of rejection, but a broader fear of the unknown. As much as I hate to parrot the sentiments of irritable older people who grumble about every kid getting a participation trophy, it is true that we live in a world that caters to our fragile egos. Every possible result for any conceivable situation is spelled out for us via a few quick internet searches. In a time when explainers and how-to guides exist for everything, influencers tell you how to dress and what to buy, and making a phone call has become a Herculean task for many, the margin for error has grown so slim it’s invisible. That also means the potential for surprise has dwindled, too. Humans have adopted an aversion to the casual risks that used to be a part of everyday life. Hazarding heartbreak and embarrassment is too dangerous. But the alternative, as Araki suggests, is an utterly boring existence, where, either way, you’ll always wonder “what if?”

(Magnolia Pictures) Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville in “I Want Your Sex”

But just depicting the pleasures of sex wouldn’t be enough to quell all that fear. Members of Gen Z might just fast forward through those scenes anyway, given that they want to see less sex onscreen as it is. Though Erika and Elliot’s intercourse is raucous and sultry, it’s their unpredictable relationship outside of the bedroom that keeps their fire — and the film’s madcap pacing — fueled. Elliot runs around LA doing Erika’s menial tasks until he drops everything at her beck and call. He upends his relationship with Minerva and screws up his best friendship with his roommate, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). And he demolishes his own ego by throwing himself into something wild and capricious headfirst. He’s chasing the spark and expanding his horizons in the process. Great sex is no longer the goal, but rather a nice bonus.

To some, it may feel like Araki is flattening complex social mores and misunderstanding the anxieties behind this era of semi-celibacy. And at times, “I Want Your Sex” does sorely miss the sharp, scrappy bite of Araki’s early films, which had far more to say than his one-track-minded latest. But there’s an amiable flair to the way Araki conveys an old adage in a new way. It’s not the destination; it’s the journey — and if anyone knows this, it’s someone whose youth was spent pursuing sex, art and feeling at risk of mistake and failure. Sex is great, but what we remember most is what led up to it. We recall the excitement of shared energy, the potency of possibility, the spark so palpable it culminated in something intimate and naked. That’s the kind of animal electricity that points us toward our purest selves. When we fear the act of sex, we don’t experience the desire that leads up to it. And when we don’t have desire, we don’t truly live.

The post “I Want Your Sex” is deliberately unsexy appeared first on Salon.com.