Equal parts horrifying and hilarious, writer/director Joanna Arnow’s mouthy feature debut, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, is a delightfully naughty piece of cinema that is sure to make you squirm with anxiety and simultaneously burn your retinas with some rather unsavory images. Harnessing the confidence and power of a seasoned auteur, Arnow’s bold point of view about a millennial navigating her way through life, love, and New York City is a refreshing respite from conventional storytelling. Provocative in all the right places, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and continued its festival run with official selections at TIFF and NYFF.

Joanna Arnow plays the protagonist Ann, a mousy 30-something whose lack of makeup and unruly hair makes her look older than she is. She’s plain and unremarkable, the type of girl who would receive a congratulatory “Happy 1st Anniversary” award from her company, despite having worked there for three and a half years. Ann doesn’t desire power or money in the boardroom. All she longs for is attention in the bedroom. She is almost 10 years into a “situation-ship” with Allen (Scott Cohen), a man decades her senior who treats her like an afterthought. Despite their differences–which there are a lot of–both Ann and Allen engage in BDSM, which further emphasizes the absurd humor of sex in general. Eager to please (despite rarely getting pleasure herself), Ann follows every order that is demanded of her, including bending over and spreading her backside (oh yes, it goes there).

We observe Ann’s bedroom interactions like a fly on the wall. However, instead of reveling in the voyeuristic taboo of it, you are begging to get squashed by a rolled-up newspaper to escape its awkwardness. Ann is a willing participant with a half-hearted attitude as she goes through the motions, which only gets more humiliating as she meets more dominating men. These include an arrogant composer and a fetish-obsessed businessman who dresses Ann up as a pig with the direction that she can only communicate through “oinks.” Her colorful private life aside, Ann’s public life is much more mundane. Her Jewish family proves overbearing and difficult, every scene intentionally stirring up feelings of anxiety.

If Lena Dunham’s character in Girls had a younger, less confidant sister who took the role of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character in Secretary, you would have a pretty adept comparison to Ann. Joanna Arnow’s decision to star in the film, which she also wrote and directed, is the perfect (and perhaps only) choice, nailing the tone and performance expertly. Overall, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed feels lightweight and breathy. It’s broken up into chapters that don’t add or subtract from the overall structure because the film plays like loosely connected vignettes with an unconventional story arc. Executive Produced by Sean Baker (Red Rocket, The Florida Project), The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is an explosive discovery in indie comedy. It catapults filmmaker Joanna Arnow into the cultural zeitgeist and I can’t wait to see what she does next.