Courtesy Ama
It’s been a sec since Girls creator—and once endlessly lauded writer/director—Lena Dunham had something for us, and her new film Sharp Stick straddles the territory between alarmingly cynical and charmingly real.
In Stick, young heroine Sarah Jo (Norwegian newcomer Kristine Froseth) finds herself embroiled in an affair with her married boss, Josh (Jon Bernthal), after reaching her mid-20s and realizing she has zero sexual experience. At home, Sarah Jo’s mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and sister (Taylour Page) dominate time and space with lovelorn tales of relationships gone awry, trysts both bad and good and, irritatingly, a glimpse into the mindset of would-be social media influencers. Here, Dunham dips her toe into backstories and almost subversive storytelling through casual reference to women flexing their power. Sadly, though, we don’t go deep enough to truly connect with anyone beyond Sarah Jo.
She is somehow all at once the most and least interesting character in the film, but things take a turn when her boss’s wife (Dunham) discovers the affair—one in a long line—and Sarah Jo is thrust out of both a job and her first experiences of pseudo-romance. Reeling, she retreats into the world of pornography, discovering a performer who kind of resembles her boss but, more importantly and like her, also bears physical scars. Sarah Jo, we learn, had an emergency hysterectomy at 15; she’d already experienced menopause at 17. In delving more into porn, she reasons that her former boss only dumped her because she’s bad at sex, and thus she sets out to experience every act she can imagine from A to Z through online dating. What could go wrong, right?
Froseth has moments of clarity and vulnerability that border on sublime, but when we never truly learn what stunted her emotional growth beyond the briefest mention of menopause, her naivete feels more horrible than endearing. Of course—and I say this as a cis man who isn’t trying to speak for anyone—women are often thrust into sexual roles in ways for which they weren’t prepared, though it’s sad to watch her go from an ostensibly self-assured human who can easily communicate her needs to a borderline obsessive child at times. Bernthal wonderfully plays the piece of shit role, the guy who, when confronted about his infidelity, becomes a blubbering mess feigning fear rather than accepting accountability.
Still, with the idea that men have long thrust women into untenable positions through various power dynamics underscoring the film, it does make sense: Dudes are great at flexing on women then treating them like they’re nothing. Assuming this is the premise of Sharp Stick, and it’s kind of hard to tell, Dunham perhaps went too subtle to truly get her point across. Then again, if women watch the film and glean something men can’t, well, that’s pretty great in its own right—and men can learn a thing or two as well.
7
+Froseth is interesting; Bernthal’s always great
-Family dynamic too minimal; wraps up suddenly
Sharp Stick
Directed by Dunham
With Froseth, Bernthal, Leigh, Dunham and Paige
Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV, R, 86 min.
