I’d interviewed her a couple weeks before its release, but I didn’t get a chance to tell writer-director Marianna Palka after her movie’s theatrical bow last fall — when I saw later her headed to a screening at the Landmark, her Prius adorned with matching “Got Dick?” bumper stickers — that if Tidal-era Fiona Apple were able to spawn a movie, it would be Palka’s Good Dick. And that’s a compliment. A barbed love story wrapped inside a threadbare character drama of swallowed anger and despair, Palka’s film eschews the achingly manufactured quirkiness or shaggy desire to please of so many of its American indie brethren. It’s instead simply seeded with moments of dark humor, and a few nice supporting turns that make it seem quietly fleshed-out, pained, funny and real, all in equal measure.

Yes, the title summons forth all sorts of jokey impulses, not to mention visions of dumb Hollywood studio comedies or, as mentioned, indie projects a lot more pat and self-satisfied. But the spare, intimate Good Dick proves that, well, size doesn’t matter. Its story centers around a sullen, emotionally deadened, pathologically introverted young woman (multi-hyphenate Palka) and an equally adrift Los Angeles video clerk (Jason Ritter, above) who slowly draws her out of her claustrophobic world. At first he merely recommends more artistically satisfying pornography, but soon he’s camping outside her apartment and pursuing a relationship with her. After slowly chipping away at her sexual antipathy and deflecting her prodigious flashes of anger with Job-like patience, the two reach an impasse in their strange, partly platonic, partly romantic relationship. The question for both: is said morass permanent, or just a final hurdle en route to more firmly rooted happiness?

The characters aren’t ever named, which contributes a bit to a sense of the metaphorical heft of the story being stretched thin. But the performances, unsurprisingly, are perfectly modulated and bounced off of one another, and Palka doesn’t use a limited budget as an excuse to punt on production value; the movie is gorgeously, economically shot by Andre Lascaris, in a manner that feeds the shuttered worldview of its wounded protagonists, who are also a couple in real life. Unconcerned with and unburdened by traditional notions of both feminine centeredness and masculine chivalry, Good Dick is at its core about awakening to the notion of a life lived looking forward, and how one good, hard… friendship (what did you think I was going to say?) can serve as a tethering lifeline in a sea of intra-personal turmoil. The other stuff? Extra benefits, don’tcha know…

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Good Dick comes to DVD with a cover that features its kissing characters superimposed over a hand-sketched, art school-approved background that summons immediate comparisons to the hand-crafted nature of Juno‘s promotional game. That may or may not help draw more of a home-screening audience for the film, but it certainly isn’t a good comparison, given the lack of preciousness and precociousness in the manner in which the film unfolds. Presented in 16×9 enhanced widescreen, with English language Dolby 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, and optional Spanish and English subtitles, Good Dick is divided into a dozen chapters via a static menu screen, and comes with two versions of its original theatrical trailer — the all-audiences version, as well as a restricted red-band version.

Its supplemental features are intriguing, anchored by a 65-minute featurette which trails Palka, Ritter and costar Eric Edelstein around the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered. There’s a lot of material from post-screening Q&As, which is nice, but plenty of photo shoot, guitar-jam noodling and other random stuff as well, and the rub is that almost all of it is hamstrung by poor sound, seemingly captured only by whatever source-mic was on the digital video camera(s) being used. There’s also a 12-minute gag reel, time-code stamped and unprocessed, which features flubbed lines and crack-ups from Ritter’s character’s video store buddies (Edelstein, Mark Webber and Martin Starr), Palka’s penchant for belching, Los Angeles’ constant goddamned police and fire sirens, and an old lady neighbor wandering cluelessly through frame during a shot at Palka’s apartment complex. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)