Movie director Lena Dunham returns with the trailer for Sharp Stick
With her first film in more than a decade, Dunham explores the sexuality of a white 20-something woman
Aux News Lena Dunham
Well, you can’t fault her for going back to what she’s good at. Lena Dunham became a household name for her frank and usually unflattering look at white 20-somethings on HBO’s Girls, becoming a self-styled “voice of a generation” that mostly grew to resent her. With her first feature as writer and director since 2010's Tiny Furniture, Dunham returns with Sharp Stick, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age sex comedy about a white 20-something.
Sharp Stick’s “semi-autobiographical” modifier is due to the movie’s focus on 26-year-old Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), who, like Dunham, had a hysterectomy to treat endometriosis. Unlike Dunham, Sarah Jo received hers as a teenager, and the trauma from the procedure left the character emotionally stunted in adolescence. When the film picks up, she’s ready to have sex and, get this, she wants to have sex with Jon Bernthal.
Here’s the synopsis:
Sarah Jo is a sensitive and naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and influencer sister (Taylour Paige). Working as a caregiver and just longing to be seen, she begins an exploratory affair with her older, married employer, and is thrust into a startling education on sexuality, loss and power.
The trailer brings to mind one of Dunham’s greatest directorial achievements, the 2013 Girls episode “One Man’s Trash,” in which Dunham’s Hannah moves in with Patrick Wilson for a few days. Taking over for Patrick Wilson, Bernthal plays Josh, the husband of Dunham’s extremely pregnant Heather.
In our review from Sundance earlier this year, we were mostly positive on Sharp Stick, with Katie Rife writing:
There are interesting ideas about sex, relationships, bodies, family, and how we present ourselves to the world in this hodgepodge of a film. And Dunham does show progress, both in terms of the diversity of her casting and pushing the limits of her style. If you’re not already a fan of her work, this film probably won’t convert you. But there’s a specific wavelength of person who may find it touching in a very personal way.
Sharp Stick opens in New York City and Los Angeles on July 29 and nationwide on August 5.
68 Comments
“she’s ready to have sex and, get this, she wants to have sex with Jon Bernthal!”
Well, being as she’s a smokin’ hott chick and this is a movie, she can have whoever she wants!
Let the Bernthal-sance continue!
(Seriously though, the guy is amazing in We Own This City)
“Aim high” ain’t just for The Air Force!
So basically its Girls crossed with Secretary but she threw in a few casting changes for the sake of diversity. Also, Katie Rife calling it a “hodgepodge of a film” is the nicest way I have read someone refer to a movie as not very good.
I’ve got the AVC Newswire for Barbarian open in another tab, and nowhere there does it inform us that Bill Skarsgard or Justin Long are white. Probably because there’s no need to do so.
Nor Lena Dunham, for that matter.
Was mentioning race as unnecessary as your comment, which added absolutely nothing of merit to the work in question?
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with snark, which is odd considering how often you post on Kinja, but this is a perfect example of such. Lena Dunham took quite a bit of criticism for her portrayal of an all-white NY or other accusations of racism directed at her.I guess you’re upset when race gets mentioned because you don’t see color. Great. But I think it’s absolutely snark-worthy to comment on Dunham’s limited and narcissistic artistic vision that seems unable to grapple with anything outside her own worldview.
White women absolutely do get more shit than white men for white privilege and white blinkeredness because the “women” part drags them down a level of the social ladder, and it’s absolutely something to be watched for. Yay intersectionality. That we treat Lena Dunham simply writing what she knows at the same level of annoyance as, say, Jared Leto doing his weird-ass abusive nonsense? It’s fairly sexist. Especially because the repetitive exploration of white existences that could not exist without privilege extends to most of what is considered prestige filmmaking and television, unless we think Breaking Bad or Ozark would have been the same had the main characters been black. Those were some white-ass narratives, yet no one seems to give Vince Gilligan the same shit that Dunham gets, and most critiques of those shows certainly don’t mention the race of their creators.
That said, one shouldn’t have to reiterate why being tired of focusing on these sorts of narratives of white middle-class ennui is reasonable every time it comes up: lots of folks were already rolling their eyes at the relative opulence of the characters and homes depicted in Sex and the City, American Beauty or Friends during their original releases, so its not like this is new. But because critics are so consistently required to reexplain the last three or four decades of complaints about representation and repetitive narratives, why wouldn’t they be tired? Especially because the folks offended on behalf of the white race (and especially those who are then offended that you would call them offended) are so seemingly inexhaustible.
I agree with some of what you say, but Breaking Bad/Ozark are very different stories from Girls. They’re heightened ones about crime that viewers aren’t expected to have any experience with. Vince Gilligan never cooked meth or shot killed anybody (as far as we know).
i have it on excellent authority that Gilligan ruined radios, destroyed the Minnow, embarrassed millionaires and their wives, and many other awful things. cooking and shooting were never in his bag o’ tricks.
Take your goddamned star, little buddy.
It’s interesting because Girls is just as heightened and stylized as any other show of that era of prestige TV, but it doesn’t necessarily get discussed that way. There’s a gender element to that difference, but the more interesting thing (to me, at least) is our fixation on crime. Girls isn’t a violent show, and it isn’t about people perpetrating or investigating crimes, so it belongs to a slightly less reputable aesthetic tradition.
I agree and disagree. Girls could both be extremely poignant at times, and masturbatory at others. Some of that is in retrospect with how Lena has acted after the success. I can see how some viewers can be upset with that fact. I do think Lena gets just a bit more flack than she should as well. She’s basically a Jaden Smith. Handed everything and thinks she’s way more poignant than she is. Thinks ridiculous things are relatable.
I tend to think of crime stories as being “less reputable”, though prestige TV has done a lot to polish pulp subject matter.
I liked Girls throughout, but I loved the final season. It really embraces how messy the characters’ relationships are but also how (apart from Marnie) they’re capable of making decisions as adults. I especially loved the episode where Shoshana calls the others out for being self-absorbed, toxic people who use their friend group as a pretext to be shitty, and I really liked the understated way that Hannah realizes Marnie isn’t going to be there for her and her baby. That’s all to say that it’s a thoughtful, delicate show about messy, often unpleasant people, and it’s a shame most critique leaves off during the second season.
I think you’re really overblowing this Crusader. We are already primed to speak about Dunham like that specifically because it was a thing during Girls and being hipster Green Pointe people.
writing what she knowsThat doesn’t mean what you think it means.“Write what you know” isn’t a fucking permission slip to “write a thinly-veiled, idealised biography”. It is not permission to be uncreative and banal. It means use your experience to inform your creativity.
Should have put it in quotes because it is such a cliche. I pretty much wholly agree with you. But Dunham gets REALLY shit on in a way some of her, yes, less talented compatriots don’t. A lot of dudes get ignored while Dunham gets piled on. Almost like there’s something else hiding in the criticism. A permission to get angrier at a type of person who is NOT supposed to be successful.
Folks roll their eyes or get wistfully disappointed when the next Disney production has been wiped of all soul or meaning beyond selling more Plus subscriptions, or outright pretend that hasn’t been the case. But Lena Dunham writes a probably fine version of the kind of story that’s been popular in prestige circles for a while, so much so that it should similarly roll an eye or two, and people get legit annoyed finding out that her mere existence has continued!
Remember when Breaking Bad decided that instead of killing progressively scarier and less human Latinos, the white main character should take out a bunch of nazis with a machine gun? It was so ambiguous and artful.
But are they binary? Or, is it non-binary? CIS-something? SO many choices…
Alright, it’s not a Chinese menu.
Lena Dunham is a mediocrity.
As long as she’s above average!
There aren’t enough roles in Hollywood for pretty white girls in their 20s
Hey guys, we found Sydney Sweeney over here!
Don’t you dare, Sydney is a treasure.
Yeah, just ask her!
‘The trailer brings to mind one of Dunham’s greatest directorial achievements, the 2013 Girls episode “One Man’s Trash” in which Dunham’s Hannah moves in with Patrick Wilson for a few days.’this was the episode that turned me off of the show for like 3 years haha. i HATED it. glad i returned because season 4 in particular is some of the best tv i’ve ever seen, but hoo boy being reminded of that episode makes me wince.
Nah dude that’s one of the best ones for sure
really? that was a great episode I thought. Although I think the episode with Matthew Rhys is one of the better episodes from that era of television. Great show despite the flack people like to give Dunham.
She never went easy on her characters and the show is 100% better for it. Hacks and Fleabag have had similar success but with easing up on the ugliness (to mostly great effect, I love both those shows) but Girls will always claim the top spot in my heart.
She…keep in mind I like most of her work…tends to cast men that are uh… “out of her league” as her lovers in her work.
There are men out there who do the same when casting though, and hell, plenty of what we hold up as handsome men and beautiful women date or marry people who aren’t considered traditionally good-looking. That’s realistic. Unfortunately the only man who comes to mind to me in this moment is Woody Allen…any less creepy examples anyone can muster up??
Well she’s hardly the Lone Ranger on that one…
adam sandler is probably the least creepy example i can think of. it’s very funny that, like, salma hayak will play his normal suburban wife.
Funny guys get pretty women, nothing new.
Paul Rust cast himself in a show opposite Gillian Jacobs and I think my eyes are still rolling several years later.
lol that one seemed oddly believable to me…but maybe because I find women with large schnozzes attractive (no idea why, but still). I must have been putting myself in her shoes. Of course, I’m no male example of Gillian Jacobs lol. Yeah, so, like, perfect example.
Look, Lena Dunham has many personality traits to make her unlikable, but at her best, she can write some compelling stuff.That said, if we’re going to take her to task for writing about 20-something white women as if she should be writing about something else then I’m sure we can expect a slew of similar articles about all the male directors who write about similar groups. Interesting that I’m not seeing the same complaints about Cooper Raiff…
she is a great writer and her most compelling stuff is when she’s most honest about the unlikeable parts of being a human. And great point, nobody is telling David Kelly to stop making shows about rich white people either.
Have you read the reviews for David Kelley’s Lincoln Lawyer series? They are ABSOLUTELY telling him that.
It feels like some people watched Girls and missed the self-awareness that the characters were supposed to be awful. On All Fours is a Girls episode that stands out to me as great.
Scorsese? Maybe?
it would probably be sort of…uh, awkward if she wrote about young Black women.
I’d argue there’s a difference between writing about mostly main characters of your race and level of privilege and writing about a fictional New York that consists of only white people plus your fantasies about Donald Glover.
And that is fair criticism.But the fact that Lena Dunham is treated far differently in terms of her limitations than her male counterparts should be notable as well.
So write something better. She’s yesterday’s news.
I think you missed the point of Donald Glover’s episode, but also I hate to break it to you but there are a lot of well off white people who dont interact with people of color in New York (and everywhere else)
Write what you know, they say
Does anyone remember when there were sexual assault allegations against a Girls writer, and Dunham came out in support of the accused, saying she had inside information that proved the victim was lying, and then admitted a year later that she completely made that up?
Lena Dunham gets sh*t for a reason.
I don’t remember that last bit, no. I remember her standing by her friend, which makes sense. Since, you know…it’s her friend. People generally give friends and family the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn’t give to strangers and it’s unreasonable to expect them not to.I think that Lena Dunham gets a lot of flack for just being her. Like when the Twitterverse raked her over the coals for for writing about sitting across from a football player or something at an awards show and how she could tell he wasn’t remotely attracted to her. And somehow this was supposed to be a terrible thing she did?It’s just weird the way that people dislike her. Granted, she’s not likeable, and her honesty about that seems to be one of the chief engines of her creativity (which is generally well regarded even as people criticize superficial aspects of it like the race of the characters she depicts). But there’s a fair few creative types that don’t seem to draw nearly the same amount of passive-aggressive ire despite the fact that they’re also pretty unlikeable.
I feel like you completely glossed over my comment in order to go on a totally unrelated rant about Dunham. Just because you don’t remember the last bit doesn’t mean it didn’t happen – in fact, it did happen! And it fucking sucked!
I think you are kind of glossing over what precisely she said.
“I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, ‘That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.’ It wasn’t mean — he just seemed confused. The vibe was very much like, ‘Do I want to f—- it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone. It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, ‘This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes’.”
That’s a pretty awful way to characterize somebody’s thoughts and frankly comes off as a racist fetishization.
I’ll watch if halfway through the meandering 20-something sexcapades, Bernthal’s character throws on a skull shirt and then goes out and shoots 20 mobsters in the face and this turns out to be a stealth Punisher reboot.
THE SHOW WE NEED… AND DESERVE!!!
As long as Lena Dunham gets punished.
I never knew I wanted Lena Dunham’s Punisher until now.
What’s she supposed to write about? If she was writing about the experience of non-white people she’d get absolutely skewered. Weird article.
Girls drove huge numbers of clicks back in the day is mostly the reason I imagine.
It’s not that she writes about ’20-something white girls’, it’s that she writes about awful, petty, privileged, 20-something white girls. Something she very clearly knows well, but the rest of us don’t have to enjoy it.
I’ve always wondered about that criticism of her, because this is exactly what would happen, and probably deservedly so. One of the first things anyone learns about writing is to write what you know.
Would you give her a pass if the main character was a person of color? Doubtful. Not sure what your point is. When writing about NOPE do you specify “black” ranchers?
The different races have different places in our cultural history that make us speak about them differently. Colorblindness is actually a misguided and outdated model. Pro tip.
“Jolly”
“White 20-something woman”Wtf does “white” have to do with the equation?
Wow!So let me get this right, Dunham’s take on all this is that people in their twenties like sex?Mindblowing.
On the one hand, while I watched all of Girls and never had the hate for it that so many other seemed to develop, I’m in no big hurry to indulge in another Dunham joint.On the other… I, too, would like to have sex with Jon Bernthal, so there is a definite appeal to this trailer.