A century of screen vixens reaches its climax with Olivia Wilde playing an X-rated shock artist who seduces her assistant in Gregg Araki’s devilish caper “I Want Your Sex.” Her Erika Tracy has Gloria Swanson’s hunger for male saps, Greta Garbo’s carriage, Marlene Dietrich’s disdain and Barbara Stanwyck’s wiles. The hair and makeup teams emphasize Wilde’s resemblance to those old school maneaters while keeping her look cutting-edge.From the opening shot of a body in a Los Angeles pool, Araki and co-screenwriter Karley Sciortino tickle us with their 21st century send-up of “Sunset Boulevard.” But Araki can go where Code-era movies couldn’t: into the bedroom where Erika handcuffs, costumes and spanks her latest conquest, 23-year-old UCLA graduate Elliot (Cooper Hoffman). To the director’s glee, modern audiences may be more uncomfortable with Erika and Elliot’s lopsided power dynamic than the sight of sweet-faced Hoffman in a pig mask and panties.Araki sprang out of the New Queer Cinema of the ’90s. His first film in 12 years itches to confront today’s moral limits. Summoning Elliot into her office, Erika first checks that her employee has signed his NDA, then prods to see whether he’s one of the “woke police,” wearisome words no matter who says them. (Araki includes sarcastic wraparound scenes of Elliot struggling to explain their affair to the real police, two stony detectives played by Johnny Knoxville and Margaret Cho.)It drives me batty in romps involving older women and younger men when the worldly siren settles for a fumbling rube. (See: Mrs. Robinson in the “The Graduate.”) But Erika gets enjoyment mostly from making Elliot crawl. Their dynamic is as one-sided as a carnival knife-thrower and her target. And Elliot is blissed out. He’s already in an emotionally submissive relationship with a medical student (Charli XCX) who refuses to sleep with him. Cowed Elliot has no trouble rising to the occasion for his older boss, even fantasizing about her insulting his generation as “a bunch of whiny, repressed weaklings.”Wilde came of age in more libertine times when pundits fretted that hook-up culture was encouraging youngsters to have too much sex. (As opposed to now where the same tsk-tskers worry that the kids are having too little.) Her breakout role on the early-aughts TV series “The O.C.” as the bisexual bartender who seduced both Adam Brody and Mischa Barton vaulted her into movie stardom before the show’s actual leads. Here was a brainy, confident bombshell who couldn’t be treated like a disposable plaything — a type of actor Hollywood has lusted for since those earlier black-and-white classics but usually mishandles.You could map the new millennium’s sexual pessimism on Wilde’s filmography: the needy online dater in “Her,” the scheming honey pot in “Richard Jewell,” the compromised tradwife in “Don’t Worry Darling.” Those movies may have helped scare younger viewers away from romance at all. But do a double-feature of Wilde’s new releases this summer — this and her own fantastic dramedy “The Invite,” in which she plays a brittle woman aching to reclaim her sensuality — and you’ll leave suspecting that we’re heading toward a fresh appreciation for naked vulnerability.You can see the think pieces already: “I Want Your Sex” is about a predatory groomer and wouldn’t be funny if the genders were reversed? Yes, and Araki is aware of that. Erika is manipulative and selfish; Elliot doesn’t respect her boundaries either. (Neither seems up on advice columnist Dan Savage’s campsite rule to leave younger partners in at least as good a state as you found them.) Underscoring the point, the sex here is artificial, ridiculous and belabored. Despite Erika’s expertise, Araki and Sciortino, founder of the website Slutever, don’t think highly of her tactics. Midway through the movie, Elliot shows off what he’s learned to a European femme fatale (Roxane Mesquida) who recoils. “This is not erotic,” she snaps. “This is performance.”Still, costume designers Arianne Phillips and Monica Chamberlain make Wilde look like a formidable love goddess. Marilyn Monroe once proved she looked good in a potato sack; Wilde seems to be wearing nothing but a latex-coated potato peel. On the other end of the fashion spectrum, Hoffman’s Elliot sports a thrifted work shirt from a trash company.Like his late father, Philip Seymour Hoffman, he’s willing to throw his whole self into playing a simp. They share guileless features and the courage to take creative risks. I’m excited to see where the younger Hoffman goes next. Following his own curiosity will inevitably lead him to become his own man. (Last fall, he starred in “The Long Walk,” the bleakest snuff film since “Titanic.”)Running under the surface of the film is the anxiety that kids his age are lucky to secure any job, even one as low-paying and exploitative as Erika’s studio assistant. Beyond Elliot, only rich kids seem to work there, like Mason Gooding’s obnoxiously funny brat who quips, “You don’t have a trust fund? What are you, an orphan?” Even Erika freely admits the art world is a scam, although some of her bluster is self-protective. We get the sense that her old work had impact; her new stuff is vapid and tacky. You almost feel for the diva when her mask slips in front of a dismissive MOMA curator — her Mr. DeMille — and Wilde reveals how badly Erika wants to be brilliant.The fear of failure can do as much harm as actually screwing up. I’ve known people who were so scared of getting heartbroken by their first love that they deliberately lost their virginity to a jerk. (And Catholic girls who protected their technical innocence while doing things that would make the pope’s toes curl.) Elliot’s roommate Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) is so tangled up trying to define herself that she falls to pieces the first time she’s challenged to act on her wants. (I’d watch a whole movie about her character, who disappears too soon.)“I Want Your Sex” rushes its murder-mystery third act. Elliot needs to suffer one more turn of the screw before the movie hurries toward a Hollywood ending that it doesn’t believe in at all. Beyond that title, the boldest thing about the film is that Araki doesn’t condemn Erika or Elliot for their fling. Mistakes make people grow. The pressure to make precisely the right choice — or else — is what’s gotten society’s bedsheets in a twist. This is not a movie about healthy intimacy but Araki does suggest how people can find it: Sex doesn’t have to be a life-or-death thriller. It can be, as it is here, a comedy. ‘I Want Your Sex’ Rated: R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and pervasive languageRunning time: 1 hour, 30 minutesPlaying: Opens Friday, July 31 in wide release
