Mark Reviews Movies: SHARP STICK

Sharp Stick, Utopia

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 28, 2022

Writer/director Lena Dunham's Sharp Stick tells the coming-of-age story of a 26-year-old woman. She has gone through a lot, lives with a pretty open and honest family of other women, has a steady-enough job after at least some level of education beyond high school, and somehow doesn't seem to have the first clue of anything about sex. Dunham's story is fairly familiar, although it's straightforward about sexual matters in a way that's admirable, but then, there's the fact of her main character, who doesn't make much sense.

There's something off about Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth). Some of it is easy to notice, such as the strange way she eats and drinks (The distracting methods have to be a specific character choice). Some of it is obvious but more difficult to comprehend the rationale behind it, such as how she is 26, a virgin at the start of the story, and almost completely ignorant of anything but the very basics of sex—and even that knowledge seems inexact.

We might buy this from someone sheltered. Sarah Jo, though, lives with her mother Marilyn (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who's very frank about her own sexual history and doesn't try to hide her exploits, and older sister Treina (Taylour Paige), who's also quite comfortable with her sexuality. Marilyn regales the half-sisters with the stories of their fathers, each of whom the mother rejected as a suitable partner. Treina and Sarah Jo talk about all of the mother's boyfriends who have come and gone, and Sarah Jo pretends to be a cat, as she would do when Marilyn wanted to scare off a particularly annoying guy. In theory, Sarah Jo should know what's up when it comes to sex, if only because of how direct the people closest to her are about the subject.

When she finally takes advantage of a chance to have sex, though, Sarah Jo doesn't understand some pretty common parlance. She tells Josh (Jon Bernthal), whom she works for as a caretaker for the developmentally disabled son (played by Liam Michel Saux) of him and his pregnant wife (played by Dunham), that she just wants to do "the main thing." Josh tells Sarah Jo that she's beautiful, and the two start finding every available opportunity to have sex.

The secret affair and emotional roller coaster that results could have been tricky enough. However, the question of Sarah Jo, who seems to have the mentality of a teenager—either for reasons that are never completely communicated or because Dunham might have initially written the character as one—in a lot of ways, adds a level of confusion and a layer of discomfort to her ensuing sexual awakening.

It shouldn't be like that, of course, and it's obviously not Dunham's intention. Sarah Jo is kind and sweet, but those qualities are portrayed, both by Froseth (whose performance does eventually offer a slightly more mature attitude) and Dunham, in such extremes that, instead of sympathizing with the character, we're more left wondering how and why she is like this. A possible answer—since it's really the only bit of back story to the character that Dunham focuses on—might be the hysterectomy Sarah Jo had as a teenager, on account of a dangerous medical condition, but if there's some connection between that and Sarah Jo's absence of knowledge about sex, it's neither developed nor simply explained here.

As for the rest of the story, the affair goes sour in a predictable way (in a scene of revelation that takes place at a most inopportune moment and just becomes more uncomfortable from there). From there, Sarah Jo decides that she's going to try everything sexual under the sun—within reason, comfort, and the law, of course (She has a board with an alphabetical list of things to try, and one really has to wonder about the illegal and immoral one listed under "N"—unless it's just a throwaway dark joke). It's partially to get back at Josh (A scene of Sarah Jo confronting her ex-lover is especially wince-worthy) and partially to gain the attention of Vance Leroy (Scott Speedman), her new favorite porn star (Somehow, she also seems to have no awareness of pornography until Josh introduces it to her). Mostly, it's a means to figure out what she might have done wrong in her first sexual relationship.

Maybe the central problem of Sharp Stick is that Sarah Jo is entirely limited as a character to her relationship with sex. As worthwhile as Dunham's ultimate message of self-fulfillment and self-confidence may be, the confounding messenger just gets in the way and completely undoes those intentions.

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