Anyone that has followed the career trajectory of Lena Dunham knows that she often takes the road less traveled. Her approach to her third feature film, Sharp Stick premiered at Sundance Film Festival and it’s a much-needed bold return to her incredible filmmaking.

The film follows naive 26-year-old Sarah Jo (played by Kristine Froseth) lives in a Los Angeles apartment complex with her influencer sister and her disillusioned mother. The trio has an interesting bond to say the least. Sarah Jo is also a wonderful caregiver to Zach, a child with an intellectual disability, who is eager to lose her virginity any way possible.

Work intertwines with pleasure when Sarah Jo embarks on an exhilarating affair with Zach’s dense but affable father, Josh. In the wake of the doomed relationship, Sarah Jo grapples with heartbreak by dedicating herself to unlocking every aspect of the sexual experience that she feels she’s missed out on for so long by making a check-list of sorts.

“I was asking a lot of questions at the time of how we depict female sexuality on screen and how it’s inexplicably linked to trauma,” Lena Dunham shared on the creation of Sarah Jo. “I was thinking about some of the trauma in my life, and some of it being medical trauma and what it would be like to have a character informed by this medical trauma. That really created this naïve and specific worldview in her and when she meets someone who cracks it open.”

In the end, it’s a quirky unpredictable connection with suitor (Luka Sabbat) that keeps the viewer wanting a bit more. As with many of Leen’s pieces, awkward sex-scenes still the show. The difference with Sharp Stick is through her sexual escapades, although she may have hurt others, she inevitably explores her sexuality and finds herself.