Sharp Stick

One might expect a Lena Dunham Rom-Com to have teeth, candour, shock But nothing prepared me for the excellence of this work — the insightful script, intense shooting style, the uniformly detailed and delicate performances. 

As the title suggests, the film is about the pain of being a woman in an America under the lingering reign of phallicism. Even in this all-woman family, where all three principals have asserted their agency, the male power still causes damage.

At 25 Sarah Jo is a virgin already bearing embarrassing midsection scars from surgery. The emotional scars come here. She is an extremely competent caregiver for needy children, the Downs boy Zach in her opening job, the cerebral palsy girl at the end. Her free-spirited mother, Marilyn, has mastered the art of using men then dumping them. Sister Treina is a flashy assertive African-American, who usually appears in costume whether for or between shooting herself performing for video streaming. .

While Mother Marilyn cruises on her even keel — usually stoned — her daughters find opposing trajectories. Treina’s confidence is smashed when the boyfriend she’s thinking of marrying denies responsibility for her pregnancy and dumps her. In a remarkably current scene, her family honours her regretful need for an abortion and celebrates the child she would have had. 

In the central plot Sarah Jo’s surrender of virginity leads to her first romantic betrayal. She admires her employer Josh’s engaging relationship with his Downs son. She also believes his claim of detachment from his pregnant wife, Heather (an opulent performance by Dunham). The wife’s expensive pregnancy suggests Josh was not sexually engaged.

For her initiation Sarah Jo approaches Josh in the laundry room, where he’s playing the New Man, keeping it clean. To his credit he first resists the invitation — but then submits. With Heather away selling real estate Josh steadily increases his sexual activity with Sarah Jo.

Sarah Jo is initially discomfited by his oral performance on her, but comes to relish it as they grow together. Son Zach is a greater bond between them than between his parents. Josh even proposes they take him and leave together. But Heather, on the verge of delivery,  recognizes the chain Josh gave Sarah Jo. Confronted, Josh confesses his affair and angrily expels Sarah Jo. That cool New Man turns into a blithering betraying loser that his strut and warm energy hid for so long.

Shaken both by her sister’s and her own betrayal, Sarah Jo opts not to flee the sharp stick of romantic disappointment but to toughen herself by comprehensive experience. She proceeds to work through two poster-size lists of sexual practices. Now she is the aggressor, the user — but still not always successful. She doesn’t get her “necrophilia.” Her plan to use Josh’s buddy Yuli as recipient of her blow job — the metaphor of which Josh taught her — is thwarted by shared cocaine, that other “blow.” 

Josh also introduces Sarah Jo to internet porn. There she discovers her porn hero, Vance LeRoy, “king” of the tattooed studs. Her fan letter leads to his video message encouraging her to stop her trivial erotics and respect her possibility for a meaningful love affair. 

At this point this hard-headed anatomy of sexual politics reveals its true genre, romantic comedy. Sarah Jo meets the engaging Africa American Arvin when he answers her ad for someone to blow. As he’s not that casual, he brings her some drinks and wants to talk first. The free blow job doesn’t impress him, because his work on porn film crews exposes him to them daily. That career enables him to convey her letter to Vance and return with the video message. 

This could be the all-time classic “Meeting Cute” of the Rom-Com. Coupled with her new child-care job, this burgeoning romance makes for the genre’s happy ending. As for Josh, we last see him suffering in the relationship he could serially betray but not leave. That stick is not so sharp after all.