Leslie Felperin 

Afternoon Delight review – Juno Temple’s stripper gets invited home

Perennial side-player Kathryn Hahn gets a meaty role as a stay-at-home LA mom inviting Juno Temple's stripper over the threshold in a flawed but perceptive comedy-drama, writes Leslie Felperin
  
  

Afternoon Delight
Self-lacerating precision … Afternoon Delight. Photograph: PR

Rachel (Kathryn Hahn, getting a meaty lead role for a change after a long string of sidekick parts) is a wealthy, Los Angeleno stay-at-home mom who's either just bored or having a mid-30s identity crisis – or both. A night out slumming introduces her to McKenna (Juno Temple), a deceptively baby-faced stripper who seems a bit lost. Rachel, feeling simultaneously maternal towards the young woman but also sexually attracted to her, invites McKenna to live with her family. This act of apparent generosity destabilises not just things between Rachel and her husband Jeff (Josh Radnor), but the whole community of friends around them Director Jill Soloway's comedy-drama isn't perfect – the leitmotif about open eyes feels over-workshopped, and the ending's a bit pat – but it nails with self-lacerating precision the manners and mores of a certain type of hipster parent, the bourgeoisie's muddled attitudes towards sex workers, and the precarious foundations of friendship. The cast is uniformly excellent, but special mention is due to Jane Lynch as a narcissistic therapist with distracting glasses.

 

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