‘Sharp Stick’ Review: The Babysitter’s Schlubs
Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), the mythical seductress at the center of “Sharp Stick,” an uneven, uneasy fable of desire by the writer, director and performer Lena Dunham, is the kind of erotic nymph who exists only in Penthouse letters and vintage soft-core movies. A babysitter long of hair and limb but short on emotional demands, Sarah Jo ventures through modern day Los Angeles in modest floral pinafores, which she lifts above her waist in invitation. No need for conversation or dinner — she only appears to eat plain yogurt, anyway.
The strong first half of “Sharp Stick” places Sarah Jo in competition with Heather (played by Dunham), a harried, heavily pregnant real estate agent. Heather relies on Sarah Jo’s expertise to look after her son, Zach (Liam Michel Saux), who has Down syndrome. But Zach’s slacker father, Josh (Jon Bernthal), is usually floating around the house, too, and the ne’er-do-well suffers only a twinge of guilt as he seizes the chance to recast himself as a romantic hero to Sarah Jo. It’s not much of a fight — and Josh isn’t much of a catch — but one of Dunham’s talents is her ability to capture the allure of heartbreakers, scuzzballs and dopes.
At home, Sarah Jo’s mother, Marilyn (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a former music video starlet who has torn through five marriages, and older sister, Treina (Taylour Paige), a boy-crazy aspiring influencer, chatter constantly (and hilariously) about girth size and titillation tips. Steeped in their dubious advice, Sarah Jo, a 26-year-old virgin at the start of the film, sets out to gain her own life experience with men. Aside from Josh, she doesn’t seem to know any — her father, whom Marilyn dismisses as a dumbbell, isn’t around — and she quickly discovers that she has a lot to learn, including that the names of certain sex acts aren’t literal. The impossibility of these two tigresses raising this lamb is Dunham’s clue that she’s operating in allegory: This film is her test to see whether the world is any kinder to a hetero male fantasy like Sarah Jo than it is to the kind of messy, cranky, needy women that Dunham has made her career putting onscreen.
Sarah Jo’s early affair with Josh leads to a garbled, meandering stretch where she works her way through an alphabetical checklist of carnal escapades with a revolving door of men. As Froseth bravely flings herself into vulnerable scenarios, the film is careful to keep the focus on her character’s pleasure (or the lack of it). A montage of flings is shot with all the sizzle of a Slurpee commercial. These scenes are too humorless for satire and too artificial to support the film’s eventual, deluded attempt to shift into a somewhat sincere coming-of-age tale. (The gentle pop soundtrack and Ashley Connor’s naturalistic cinematography seem to think that this has been that kind of movie from the beginning.) By that point, the naif’s misadventures simply feel like an argument to not take sex so seriously. Watching Sarah Jo’s repeated hallucinations of a cartoon woman mating and giving birth, one can imagine Dunham whispering to the audience that moments of awkward, sloppy intimacy aren’t shameful — they’re the foundation of human existence.
Sharp Stick
Rated R for sexual situations, including one under the influence of psychedelics. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters.
