The Ruins (2008)

The Olivia Wilde renaissance is upon us. After her personal life controversy that weighed down the fairly mediocre Don’t Worry Darling, the actor/director took a four year hiatus before coming back into the spotlight this summer. The box-office success of A24’s The Invite has taken center stage, but the campy erotic thriller I Want Your Sex is an equally delightful display of Wilde’s talent. 

The film opens with a young man named Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) running through a house in women’s lingerie, his nose bleeding. When he gets outside, he finds Erika (Wilde), naked and floating in the pool. She appears dead, and Elliot screams in horror. This sets the basis for the plot of the film, which spans the 9 ½ weeks before the incident intercut with the police interrogation afterwards. 

It turns out Erika and Elliot’s relationship was even more unconventional than their outfit choices might suggest. Erika is a well-known artist who revels in creating provocative multimedia pieces that stretch the boundaries between artwork and pornography. Elliot comes into her life when he is fresh out of college and looking for a job as an assistant. The dynamic is instantly predatory, with Erika making sexual comments in the interview and deciding to have sex with him mere days later.

This isn’t the first workplace erotic thriller to feature an older woman and a younger man, but it’s by far the best. Where Babygirl (2024) flips the power dynamic when it comes to sex, positioning Kidman’s character as submissive enough to blow up her entire life for a man, I Want Your Sex keeps the woman in charge. Director Gregg Araki understands the inherent subversiveness of the dynamic and allows Erika to emanate power. She is a boss in the boardroom and in bed. Her bitchy, confident demeanor isn’t an act, it’s the way she approaches the world. Her dominance makes the film sexy even as she clearly behaves immorally and takes advantage of her employee. In the police interrogations, Detective Zola (Margaret Cho) serves as the moral voice of clarity, pointing out just how messed up the dynamic was despite the initial appeal it had to both sides.