Lena Dunham’s bold new film on female sexuality, Sharp Stick: here’s everything you need to know

Complicated, awkward, a little strange, candidly sexual – yep, Sharp Stick is definitely a Lena Dunham movie. The writer, director and actor is set to release her first film since 2010’s Tiny Furniture (after a long break away from our screens, aside from her cameo in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood), and it’s fair to say that it’s already got people talking. 

Lena wrote and directed Sharp Stick – as well as starring in the movie alongside the likes of Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal and Taylour Paige – and has described it as a ‘sexual fable’ which was inspired by the impact of her hysterectomy procedure in 2017.

From controversy surrounding the main character, the child-like Sarah Jo, to early reviews and what Lena herself has said about the movie, here’s everything you need to know about Sharp Stick…

What is Sharp Stick about?

The story centres around twenty-something virgin Sarah Jo, who lives with her mum and sister on the outskirts of Hollywood. Having had a hysterectomy in her teen years, the film follows her as she discovers her sexuality, entering into an affair with an older married man and subsequently exploring her sexuality even further through discovering porn. 

The official synopsis reads: “A naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood begins an affair with her older employer and is thrust into an education on lust, loss and power.”

Speaking of the dramedy, Lena said in a statement that she imagined a character “whose sexual journey would be totally unique, unmarred by shame or self-hate or the projections of others. She would use sex not to destroy her body but to heal it from a history of medicalised trauma and cultural projection.”