Lena Dunham watches flawed young women closely and films their bodies without fuss. We rate her frankness and her patience with difficult characters, but her storytelling can be uneven.
Fi1m perspective
Dunham often keeps the camera still and the frame wide, leaving us time to watch people behave in their surroundings. Sex and bodies receive the same unidealised attention, without being tidied up to flatter the characters. Her recurring subjects are young women negotiating desire and ambition while still trying to work out how to live. We like the patience with people whose behaviour does not always deserve it.
Tiny Furniture (2010), which she wrote, directed and acted in, established her semi-autobiographical approach. Girls (2012–2017) expanded that work into a series she created, wrote, directed and starred in, following young women in New York. Its limited racial diversity narrows the city it shows us, even when the observation of flawed, privileged characters is sharp. Her collaborators include producer and writing partner Jenni Konner and producer Judd Apatow, a useful reminder not to credit her alone for everything that works.
In Industry (2020), those concerns sit inside a banking drama, although Dunham directed the pilot rather than the series as a whole. We were surprised to care about its young bankers, because the performances make ambition complicate the ordinary business of getting through a working day. The office politics give us reasons to keep watching; the sex and excess are less reliable, especially when they push the work aside. We recommend the programme with that reservation, while recognising that its strengths and weaknesses cannot all be attributed to the director who helped get it started.
Her return to contemporary coming-of-age material with Sharp Stick (2022) is weakened by uneven construction. Catherine Called Birdy (2022), her first period feature, instead adapts a young-adult novel into lively, irreverent comedy. That move suggests there is more to her directing than the semi-autobiographical material that established her, without proving that an adaptation will always suit her better. For a next step beyond the office, we would try Catherine Called Birdy.
Biography
Lena Dunham is an American writer, director and actress. She created, wrote and starred in the HBO series Girls (2012–2017), also directing several episodes. She began her career with the independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), which she wrote, directed and starred in.
Dunham directed the pilot episode of the HBO/BBC series Industry (2020). Her other directing and writing credits include the films Sharp Stick (2022) and Catherine Called Birdy (2022). She studied creative writing at Oberlin College.
