SXSW 2015 Review – The Little Death

Starring: Josh Lawson, Bojana Nokavic, Damon Herriman
Directed by: Josh Lawson (debut)
Written by: Josh Lawson (debut)

For his feature length directorial debut, Josh Lawson (TV’s “House of Lies”) takes 4 loosely related stories of sexual fetishes and intertwines them for a film with decidedly mixed messages. Between rape fantasies and not being able to get off unless their partner is crying or sleeping, Lawson tackles the more eccentric side of sexual fetishism, but with a comedic twist that never quite lands.

“The Little Death” is extremely uneven all around, with 3 of the stories leading to total disaster and a message of, essentially, keeping your sexual fetishes to yourself. The fourth story, however, is an extremely sweet, albeit dirty story of a deaf man using a sign language translator over video chat to call a phone sex line. It is not only thematically different than the other tales in the film, but it is an extremely charming hint of Lawson’s capabilities as it plays as a separate vignette almost entirely saved for the final segment. While Lawson should be applauded broaching some pretty provocative subject matter, “The Little Death” stays relatively tepid and never makes a lasting impact comedically or otherwise.

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