Lena Dunham hasn’t made a feature film since Tiny Furniture 12 years ago, but she has some plausible excuses—running Girls for six seasons, conceiving another series, writing two books, acting here and there. It took the pandemic to get her behind the camera again and, low and behold, the resulting film is about people living in very close quarters, not going out much and, at least for some, having a lot of sex. Sharp Stick brims over with the energy of young people who wanted to make something, quickly and down and dirty. The result is an invigorating film about a beautiful woman who, in her mid-20s, sheds her lifelong avoidance of sex to dive into the deep end. The FilmNation production is making its world premiere in the Premieres section of this year’s festival.
It’s fairly safe to say that no film has ever centered on a protagonist with an explained sexual history quite like that of the main character. But that can wait a moment, as it takes a while to make sense of the rather complicated living arrangements at a modest home in Los Angeles’ Atwater neighborhood.
The good-looking, good-for-nothing man of the house is speed-talking Josh (Jon Bernthal), an incurable philanderer with an excessive eagerness to please who still has some key life lessons to learn (and probably never will). Dunham plays his soon-expecting wife Heather, whose sweet young son has mental issues and is looked after by nanny Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a stunner who always wears a smile and has a selfless personality that warms all in her vicinity.
The latter’s mom Marilyn (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is an apartment manager, while Black adopted sister Treina (Taylour Paige), a club promoter, has limited patience for family shenanigans. In short, the household is something of a zoo full of impulsives, none of whom exactly have their acts together.
Sex has always played a major role in Dunham’s creations and never more so than here, where things get very complicated very quickly. At least vaguely aware of his immaturity, Zach bends over backwards to admit his need for self-improvement. But an old hound dog never dies, apparently, and when, in a private moment, Sarah Jo confides to him that at 26 she’s still a virgin and would like him to cure her of this condition, the gentleman cannot find a way to refuse.
There is a startling reason Sarah Jo hasn’t let anyone into her life, or pants: She had a radical hysterectomy at 15. Now, however, she wants to move forward and senses she’ll be in good hands with old pro Zach, who, it unsurprisingly turns out, used to be a porn star. Sarah Jo and the film achieve successful lift-off here, and leave it to Dunham to come up with all manner of sexual and dramatic permutations that send Sharp Stick flying in all sorts of unexpected directions.
As it her wont, the writer-director doubles down on this set-up to insure that Sarah Jo makes up for lost time. She starts writing to porn stars she particularly admires, praising them for their special talents. She creates long lists of variations she wants to try—Eiffel Tower, jackhammer and creampie, just for starters—and you can just imagine Dunham’s merriment increasing by the minute as she sends Sarah Jo out on her long-delayed sexual odyssey.
As amusing as it is, this latter stretch soon begins to feel a bit silly and indulgent; instead of settling into an at least marginally serious look at how adolescent sexual trauma has deeply messed with a young woman’s life, it feels more as though we’re at some Las Vegas convention dedicated to the latest in sex toys. Yes, we’re seeing and hearing stuff here we may never have seen in a mainstream film before, but it all begins to feel a bit outrageous just for outrageousness’ sake.
Nonetheless, the scenes and characters here feel freshly minted and alive, and most of Dunham’s outrageous gambits pay off in unexpected humor; few go where she goes and win the way she does. As ever, her characters are loaded with foibles that are often so dramatic as to sideline nuance. All the same, the film captures an accurate Covid-era snapshot of short-tempered people getting on each others’ nerves due to the unnaturally and indefinitely protracted need to remain cooped up, sometimes in groups that never would have chosen such extended close proximity.
As addled, frustrated and sidelined as nearly all the characters are under the extraordinary conditions, they still aren’t very different from Dunham’s—and most comedians’—usual collection of neurotics. She’s made good use of her enforced enclosure.
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