I Want Your Sex

The 2026 film, I Want Your Sex, is ostensibly about sex, for the film is saturated with that leitmotif, but the narrative is actually a critique of California culture, with European culture playing a minor role to provide a contrast. Generally, comedy can be used by screenwriters as a means by which audiences can accept, or at least acknowledge criticism that would otherwise be met with ferocious denial befitting a drug addiction. In 2026, the sheer dogmatism of ideologically-soaked imposing at will, as if with facts of reason rather than the gloss of merely subjective opinion, was the mentality of the day afflicting (young) adults under 40 years-old in California. Film can expose such banality to the light of day and thus serve as a self-correcting agent for a societal or sub-societal culture, for the human brain, standing on its own as arrogance on stilts, may be woefilly and unretrievably vulnerable to purblindness when beliefs and values are in the grip of ideological idolatry.

The film’s plot centers around Elliot being hired by Erika Tracy, a commercial artist. Her art’s theme is sexual in nature, and it is not long before she enlists all-too-willing Elliot in sadistic-masochistic sexual fantasies, for Elliot’s girlfriend, Minerva, is cold as ice in bed—even going so far as to fake enjoying sex with Elliot. As the film’s narrative unfolds, Erika and her pretentious (and violent) assistant, Vikktor, temporarily frame Elliot for murder (of Tracy!) in order to raise the asking prices for the art. The two come to a working-agreement wherein both profit from business dealings with the other, and the film ends with Elliot and Erika separately having the same dream in which they get married and she finally reveals herself as a self-imploding demon, which may refer to the true nature of the culture being critiqued by the film.

Erika, Vikktor, and the film’s gay trope/slut, Zap, another of Erika’s employees, are so intensely narcissistic that even their external mannerisms come off as pretentious. Erika even tells Elliot, “People think only about themselves.” She also tells him that most people are idiots and cowards, so don’t worry about what they think. Arrogant self-vaulting, as if on stilts during a flood, looks down on the pathetic losers below. According to M. Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie, however, a sense of inner emptiness lies behind such pretention and narrow, selfishness along with a callous indifference to whether other people are suffering. Erika’s inner emptiness can be grasped in Erika’s statement to Elliot, “Sex is everything and nothing.”  She even makes fun of her European acquaintance for having told Elliot that sex is a dance and a language of touch, and thus of even emotional intimacy. “That’s why I hate Europeans,” Erika says when Elliot recounts what the European woman told him in her hotel room. But in reducing sex to impersonal S & M, which highlights pleasure from the inflicting of pain, Erika can be critiqued on her judgment on the European’s interpretation of sex. For according to Erika, “Sex is a drug, like every other addiction,” so a person has to “learn how to control it or it will control you.” Because sex is Erika’s life in terms not only of her art, but also relationships that might otherwise be romantic, the implication is that her life, and even her sense of self, is actually empty, encased in an addiction to inflicting pain through impersonal, and mechanical sex. Her admission to Elliot, “We’re both emotionally stunted and suck at communicating” actually applies only to herself, for Elliot is the proverbial adult in the room.

Erika’s superficial toughness does, however, have a benefit, in that she is able to criticize the young-adult generation that has been so coddled by parents that ideological discomfort itself is a trigger. Anything uncomfortable is attacked even though discomfort can spur psychological development—something the “woke” generation sorely lacks. Erika recounts to Elliot that a young adult using social media (Tic-Tok) complained in a comment because the person had not given consent to see a photo of two people holding hands!  The sheer presumptuousness evinces a puerile stage of psychological development and thus a proclivity to throw a temper-tantrum when “accosted” by the discomfort of a hated ideological stance held by another person as if such a stance were unlawful and incorrect. It is no wonder, Erika says, that 30 percent of that generation play video games rather than have sex.

The film’s director and writer, Gregg Araki, told an audience in person in 2026 that the 30 percent line is important to the film. What he did not make explicit is that a generation of emotionally-stunted and isolated judgmental people is not of benefit to a society. The sheer ideological intolerance and presumption exclusively to truth, which in the 1980s had been associated with evangelical Christians, had come to characterize “politically-correct” children-adults in California by 2026. To such enraged intolerance, the rest of us can be said to have a duty to reply to such primped arrogance on stilts, Deal with it. But as “woke” as the “politically correct” were in 2026, they were actually asleep in their presumption and abject, narrow selfishness, which pathetically defines truth itself from such a standpoint and regards differing people as capable only of mere opinion. How convenient. A person can be addicted to an ideology too.

 

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) centers most of the dramatic tension on the hotel’s manager, Sonny Kapoor. In the first film, the tension is more evened out among the hotel customers and Sonny’s bid to make the run-down hotel a viable operation. The hurdles faced by the retirees in the first film are more gritty, or realistic, than are the challenges in the sequel. Indeed, the second film can come across to the viewer as excessively glitzy, especially at the end when the customers, Sonny, and his family and friends are on a dance floor positioned as if performing for an audience sitting out in front. It is unlikely, for instance, that Sonny could dance so well, particularly as he delayed practice to the disappointment of his fiancé, Sunaina. That film becomes a performance, and this can stretch a viewer’s suspension of disbelief because the screenwriter of both films, Ol Parker, stretches the characters too far beyond themselves. That they, along with Sunny and his wife and their families and friends go into a performance mode can remind the viewer that he or she is watching a performance—that the movie itself is a performance. So much for the suspension of disbelief, a psychological wonder that allows the human mind to forget that it is watching a movie and thus be able to “enter” the story-world.

The problems faced by the hotel customers in the first film included locating a lover of long ago without any remaining prospects of a life together (Graham Dashwood), getting a job (Evelyn Greenslade), being in a bad marriage (Douglas and Jean Ainslie), getting a hip replacement (Muriel Donnelly), and staving off boredom (Norman Cousins). Sonny Kapoor struggles with making the rundown hotel work. These “ordinary life” problems contrast with most (but not all) of the problems that the characters face in the sequel.

The second film centers on Sonny’s quest to engage an American corporate partner to put up funds to buy a second hotel (even as Sonny’s real engagement with Sunaina suffers). In fact, the film begins with Sonny, accompanied by Muriel Donnelly, in southern California to visit a prospective partner in a sleek corporate office. It is as if Sonny had made the first hotel into a smooth-functioning operation. Guy Chambers, a hotel inspector played by Richard Gere, squashes any such illusion fancied by Sonny. In fact, adding Gere, who often played smooth romantic leads, makes the film too star-studded, or glitzy rather than realistic. Gere looks utterly out of place at the hotel; that Sonny treats him like royalty does not help matters. At any rate, Sonny secures Guy’s support not just for another rundown hotel, but, rather, for the highbrow Viceroy’s Club. The purchase is completed incredibly fast, such that it is done in time for Sonny’s and Sunaina’s wedding reception—nevermind that the engagement had been rocky, especially as Sonny turned his attention to pleasing Guy so to gain his financial recommendation so the corporation would agree to become partners. Also at the glittery (and staged) reception, Evelyn’s hesitancy in dating Douglas evaporates as he delivers a (staged) speech. The problem with Douglas’ divorce is apparently solved. Norman Cousins and Carol Parr talk about Carol’s having cheated on Norman, so they are fine. Any hint of ordinary is gone as the customers (except for Muriel, whose sadness in facing death is the outlier) join pretty-boy Guy and the united families (and friends) of Sonny and Sunaina are suddenly performing a dance number positioned as if they were on a theater stage.

Because the dramatic tension in the first film is based on hardship, the tensions in the second film involving the same characters may not feel real in the sense of being contained within suspended disbelief. Graham Dashwood’s arduous attempts to get information from local government bureaucrats and the man struggling with his ailing heart as he plays cricket with some local boys are far indeed from the Sonny’s over-the-top efforts to please Guy Chambers. Given Sonny’s immaturity, it is astonishing that he is right that Guy is a hotel inspector (though Sonny does not realize that the ill-treated hotel customer, Jodi, is also a hotel inspector).

In short, the sequel loses touch with its basis, the characters and their worlds in the first movie. This is particularly odd because Ol Parker wrote both screenplays! I submit that the sequel may even be a different genre than the first. The sequel ends as if it were Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), another sequel about a small hotel. With singing in nearly every scene, the performances are not an over-stretch. The movie is not meant to be realistic. 

Fortunately, Mamma Mia! (2008), the film that that sequel follows, has the same format, so that the sequel is not realistic is not a problem. In fact, this demonstrates that the screenwriter of the sequel, who happens to be Ol Parker (the same screenwriter of the Marigold Hotel movies), was capable of carrying forward a story without stretching it too far. In fact, Parker did not write Mamma Mia! So his faithfulness to that movie in writing the sequel is all the more impressive, and this leaves the question of his lack of fidelity in writing The Second Best Exotic Hotel even more perplexing because he knew how to extend a story without stretching it too far.

By the way, both sequels have what may be Parker’s signature point: pure happiness without some sadness is not possible in life, so a film that is too saccharine can buck the suspension of disbelief. In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, some sadness is present because Donna has died and she is missed. The film even includes Donna’s ghost, as if to drive home the point that even the happiness of a wedding contains some sadness. In The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Muriel Donnally knows she will die soon; this can be inferred from her reaction coming out of the examination room at a clinic. Maggie Smith marvelously underplays Donnally’s reaction, which actually adds to its significance. In acting, sometimes less is more. Donnally returns to her room during the wedding reception, presumably for medical reasons and also to write Sonny a letter because she is leaving early the next morning to return home to Britain presumably because she knows she is dying. Again, Parker inserts sadness in a wedding scenario. I contend that this is no accident; he is making a statement. Unfortunately, the performance mode at the wedding reception can undercut the suspension of disbelief concerning Donnally’s dramatic plight. If the other hotel customers are really performers, then so too is Maggie Smith.

In conclusion, screenwriting a sequel best includes both a lot of study of the original firm and the willingness be constrained so as to retain a mooring. Of course, a screenwriter and director may prefer to have a free hand in putting together a sequel, but the cost may be glitches in the suspension of disbelief, by which a viewer becomes engrossed in a story-world rather than being conscious of watching a movie.