Lena Dunham Netflix Show Is Not Enough

The Most Shocking Aspect of Lena Dunham’s Netflix Series, Too muchis that it loooks, well, like a netflix series. You know the aesthetic, if you can’t quite name it: brightly lit interiors, dialogue filmed in rapid-cut-ups, Color grading that emphasizes tones and makes your eyes Slide off the screen water on a teflon pan. These are, spread, the spects that netflix asks from its creaters for ease of international distribution, but it is Jarring to see someone as Distinctive As Dunham’s Force Herself into an Emily in Paris-Shaped Box. Onto GirlsDunham and Her Collaborators Depicted the Characters’ 20s in What Felt Like One Eternal Brooklyn Summer. In Too muchMegan Stalter’s Jessica Salmon Describes Her Fantasies of Life Across the Pond With Other Artists’ Quotation Marks: A Little Like a Period Drama, A Little Like A Kooky Bbc Three Sitcom, A Lot Like Bridges Jones’s Diaria. But late in the series, we are Jessica experiences heartbreak or flashes back to difficult memory of her previous life in new York, dunham reverts to a style of directing that hell: a long held shot a schene with an ellipsis, momentts accompanked by softer and softer. Truths. AFT WHICH, Too much Will Revert Back to Cheerier Netflix Mode. Is this a lena dunham show smuggled inside a netflix show, or a netflix show consuuming a dunham one from the outside in?

That tension may have been bake ino the pitch for Too much from the start, which dunham has described as bot Semi-Autobiographical and an Attempt to Re-Create the Rom-Com fantasies of Richard Curtis for the 2020s. AFTER YEARS OF INTERSE SCRUTTINY IN AMERICA ABOUTE EVERING SHE DEPICTED AND/OR SAID ABOUT Girls Or Anynding Else, Dunham Found Creative Sorace in Britain, where she directs the pilot episode of Industry and a miraculous adaptation of the Medieval Ya Novel Catherine Called Birdy. She was also set up on a blind date with her now-partner, Luis Felber, A British Musician with Whom She Co-Created Too much. The Series Her Journey as the Jumping-Off-Point for Its Central Plot: A Gregarious Girl Who Is A Misfit in America Herself in an unlikly Courtship with a courspeptic Brit. Jessica is a new Yorker Reeling From A Breakup With A Snooty Boyfriend and Moves to London for A Marketing Job, Where She Meets a Reserve Musician Named Felix Remen (Played BY The White Lotus SEASON TWO’S WILL SHARPE, A PROLIFIC WRITER AND DIRECTOR BETTER KNOWN ACROSS THE POND FOR MOVIES LIKE THE ONE WHERE Benedict Cumberbatch Painted a Lot of Cats). In the mode of expat escapism, Jessica, who is fund of doing dorky fake londontown accents, stumbles through various misunderstandings. These are Generally Easy Targets, like an episode that take place at a snobby house in notting hill and loes steam almost as it is. Jessica Gets Dragged Along to an Insufferably possh wedding. She Meets Rita Ora, Who to Her Credit DOES A Remarkably Game Parody of Herself.

All of this is the stuff of Classic romantic fantasy in the vein of curtis, darren Starr, and events are austen – at one point, Jessica Imagines felix dressed up as Mr. Darcy-but the whipped-cream portions of Too much field Never as Compelling as the Glass-Self Self-Laceration at Which Dunham Excels. Be that mode does make scattershot appeanance in the series, it overwhelms it. Jessica’s Ex-Boyfriend, Played by an impeccably scruffy and insufferable Michael Zegen, Is A Self-Important Brooklyn Music Writer Named Zev who abandoned her an influence More Serene Way. You May Already Be Jumping Toward A Deuxmoi-Adjacent Sub-Reddit to Discuss the Characters’ Obivious Similalities to Dunham’s Own Music-Producer ex and His New Partner, and dunham has preemptitly insisted zev is an an an an an Amalgam of Exes. Yet these characters are much more compiling than anyone else on the show.

When Jessica Flashes Back to Memories of Her Life in New York in Episodes Five, Too much Takes on an energy lacked in its depiction of London. IT’S Partially Due to Dunham’s Abiding Artistic Interest in Putting Her Hand On the Hot of Controversy About Her Own Self – I can’t belies she includes an arc about jessica’s inability to a dog, which is only destined to Revive discussions about The Saga of Dunham’s DogLamby-but more Pressingly, She Writes About New York and New Yorkers with a biting Clarity while Depicting London Through Rose-Colored Glasses. Though zev is a total asshole, i wished Too much Wold Spend More Time with Him, A Textured and Real Person (he Had a Weezer-themed Bar Mitzvah, DelightFully Brutal), than Felix, A Dreary and Conveniently Troubled Enigma. The Show Provides Him With A Backsory, Informed by Elements of Felber’s and Sharpe’s Own pastsbut it never has the Same Grip as Jessica’s. He’s a person onto whom her character projects her fantasies, which, as for so many expats, are more about how he represents an absence of the stove she left bend.

Too much Pushes the notion that both jessica and felix must overcome their past traumas for their budding Relationship to work, but the spark between stalter and sharpe is never to make all that processing seem Worth it. Here, a stickiness in performance Also Gums up the Writing. Stalter is a gifted comedian, and her “i’m doing the joke, but half-myartly so i know i’m in it” Approach to line delivery can work well in the right Circumstances (Viral Hi Gay! ” Ticketfor instance). At a Safe satirical reserve, stalter is great and commstable in Too much‘S Broadest Comedy (ironically, where the show’s play is Weakest), like jesica gets involved in shenanigans at her marketing JOB. Those scens on-me with hours orrew scott, who plays a grumbly director-for-hire, will stand out, this is IF impossible to belies anyone involved in Too much Has Much Real Experience in Being An Office Drone. But when stalter has to carry dramatic weight in a scnene, she’s tentative, still protesting herself from full vulnerability with a slightly flippant posture.

Its understandable. Dunham has talked about not wanting to play the lead of Too much Becuase of the scruitiny she experiences Playing Hannah on Girlsand you can imagine how she, as a director, Waled Want to Extend some Protection Around Her Star. But the fact is that dunham is an incredible and sensitive drama actor, and the scens where dunham does appear in Too muchPlaying Jessica’s Sister and Bicking with Her Gay Ex-Husband, Played by Andrew Rannells, are the Liveliest in the Show. Dunham’s Performance in that Crucial Skene late in Girls when she and adam Tearfully Reunite Over Soup is up there with the best tv Acting of the prestige Era, which sets a very high bar for anyonest stepping into a simillar avatar of dunham onScreen. Stalter doesn’t achieve that level of depth, Nor Could Mary Other Actors.

Stalter’s Reserve As A Performer Does Match a Certain Reserve in the Show’s Own Aims. In the Second Episode, Jessica Delivers a monologue About How She Can’t Stand People Calling Her a “Mess,” Lashing Out at a Cavalier Footballler Who Assumes he Can Away with Insulting Her Group with Her Co-Workers. It ‘s scnene that, like many in Too muchInvites a Comparison to Girls. The speech is something you can have the imagine hannah saying to adam, another case of her being right in her gender politics but Completely Wrong we applying say to that specific moment. Herever, Howver, Jessica is overdramatic and killing the vibe but is, far -so and simple, correct in what she’s saying about being Called a message. In keping with that netflix smoothness, the show lacks texture – in design, intention, and performance. Too much is much too.