The Sundance Film Festival launched a Los Angeles event called Next Weekend, where they are showing films from the festival’s “Next” program and a few premieres. I was excited to have a little piece of Sundance in August, and I was able to catch the premiere of a new film by some Sundance veterans I met my first year in 2011. Director Madeleine Olnek and stars Lisa Haas and Jackie Monahan made Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same which was adorable, so when I saw their picture in the program guide for The Foxy Merkins I was sold, although the title Foxy Merkins kind of sells itself.
This time, Haas and Monahan play lesbian hookers. Again, enough said, right? Margaret (Haas) is new on the street so Jo (Monahan) becomes her Ratso Rizzo, complete with a street crossing/taxi cab encounter. Scenes of Margaret learning the ropes involve grabbing random mall ass and stealing coffee. You can tell Monahan and Haas have a natural chemistry and comic rhythm.
On the job, the clients aren’t so much about the sex. Each one has a fetish that’s not even really sexual, just comical. One john (joan?) only involves movie theater concessions. A pair of accountants with a silly voyeur fetish are particularly funny, but the major set piece is an extended single take with a fully frontally naked Haas. I’ve got to applaud the performer for going all out.
These are harmless, ridiculous fetishes and there is a mockumentary interview segment where hookers are able to recount even more crazy requests they’ve fulfilled. It is ridiculous, absurd and outrageous without ever being vulgar. Every scene is genuinely funny, some involving nonsexual banter between Jo and Margaret about sharing clothes. There is a recurring gag about Women’s Studies majors and MFA drama students ending up homeless, so we’re definitely feeling someone’s pain here. There is even a merkin salesman and the merkin becomes an emotional hook by the end of the film.
I’m trying not to spoil any of the specific jokes because I want you to see this one day, but the absurd sense of humor is hard to explain unless you see it. So I’m going to issue a spoiler warning. In the next paragraph, I will mention a few specific jokes that illustrate the kind of bizarre humor that cracked me up in The Foxy Merkins. I don’t think it ruins the joke. It will still be funny when you see it play out, but if I’ve already sold you on the style of humor, just skip to the last paragraph.
As I hinted at above, one of Margaret’s clients just wants to crawl on a movie theater floor and eat Margaret’s popcorn and drink her soda. That’s weird. The two lesbian accountants just want to watch Jo motorboat Margaret fully clothed. Even the naked one is more about the client’s desire to stage a crazy humiliation of Margaret while she’s naked. These are only three of the set pieces in The Foxy Merkins so I hope they give you an example of the welcome irreverence skirting around the issue of actual sex in a sex comedy.
The Foxy Merkins is also a reminder of how much fun Sundance movies can be. This is the festival that brought us Beasts of the Southern Wild but it’s also the one that brought us Clerks. Hopefully Next Weekend will give it the first push and I’m here to tell you to remember the name Foxy Merkins.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
