Early 2012. Twilight and Hunger Games fill theaters. Uber and 4G do not exist. Twitter is just becoming the cool tool to follow the stars and everyone still tells their story on Facebook, the social network of reference. On TV, the toxic Gossip Girl has replaced the unrealistic Sex and the City in the imagination of teenagers dreaming of New York. Until a new series moved in and changed the game. Girls. The story of four friends who find it difficult to evolve in the megalopolis, their careers and their relationships, in a way that is sometimes aberrant, often unbearable, always touching. At the top of the bill, an awkward heroine that we see naked without being eroticized from the first episode. Apart from the classic narrative arc of the young white American with a degree in literature who wants to become a writer, Girls breaks the codes of series that follow female heroines – shows that are shameless like Elite or sassy like Fleabag do not exist. Girls crystallizes for the first times that weird moment in your early twenties, those screwed up friendships, those toxic relationships, that fumbling sex life, those unpaid internships, those existential questions. This seems to flow from source in any current audiovisual creation for the under 25s, but ten years ago, it was almost revolutionary. Behind this jewel of transgressive writing, a young woman barely older than her character: Lena Dunham. From sudden success to questioning This one was 24 years old when she signed a deal with the reference behind the most acclaimed series, namely HBO. Never seen. “I felt like the intern who’s also on the poster,” she later confided, here on the Talk Easy podcast. The channel trusts the young New Yorker to develop the series while her CV only includes an independent feature film, Tiny Furniture, produced with the means at hand. In six seasons and 62 episodes, Girls earns a rain of ‘Emmy Awards and several Golden Globes. A success that earned Dunham the deserved status of young prodigy and feminist icon. But she feels uneasy. “I was supposed to be this voice of millennials when in reality, I haven’t seen a single millennial since I was 24, except those paid to play comedy with me” she confessed recently in the podcast. The final episode ends, Dunham is 30, multi-award winning and on the verge of stardom… At what cost. Her cash, instinctive style, without fear of discomfort honors her as much as it serves her. She is criticized for writing that is too provocative, but above all, and rightly so, not enough inclusiveness in the stories she tells. Lena Dunham represents ONE slice of millennials: privileged, educated, urban. It is also the sweet time when we tweet as we breathe and our reference millennial is no exception to the rule. Still at Talk Easy, she says: “When something makes me ashamed, I like to go after it feeling in my writing.” Dunham is not one to keep her shameful musings and thoughts to herself. In her first memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, she recounts how, at age 7, she discovered her one-year-old sister’s vagina, and how she offered her candy in exchange for a kiss on the mouth. The scandal is immediate, and Dunham cancels her promotional tour, profusely apologizes while denouncing the far right who calls her a pedophile. His sister comes to his defense, on Twitter, of course. Dunham slips again when she defends a colleague of Girls accused of sexual assault, and not the victim. Very quickly, she backtracks with a long letter that seems sincere. “I apologize to all the women I have disappointed”. She knows that a lot is expected of her. It remains undeniable that for each slippage, Lena Dunham had to justify and apologize in proportions that one would never see in a man from the world of cinema. Long a feminist muse thanks to her writing cash, her newsletter Lenny Letter where Jennifer Lawrence and Emily Ratajkowski publish their feminist essays, and her speeches in favor of #MeToo, the expectations are enormous towards Lena Dunham. It’s too much for the one who describes herself as an introvert. A measured return Since the end of Girls, the director has kept a low profile… as much as an American star is capable of: she tweets less, launched her podcast The C-Word, appeared in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and focused on writing feature films. It was serious health issues related to her endometriosis that mostly constrained her. After several operations, she finally underwent a hysterectomy, a procedure which consists in removing the uterus. The year 2022 marks her return with two films. The first Sharp Stick, is considered disturbing by critics and Internet users. Is it disturbing or is it, as always with Dunham, a rare and honest dive into the complex life of a young woman, here victim, like her, of a hysterectomy? It would seem that the gauges of reviews and what’s tolerable for female directors are always different from male directors. The second (her third feature) is Catherine Called Birdy was released on Amazon Prime on October 7th. A new dive into the life of an American woman from a trendy and glamorous city? Quite the reverse. We are here in 13th century England. The scenario ? The story of a 13-year-old girl who has her period for the first time. In the main role, the excellent Bella Ramsey, unforgettable as Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. Funny, touching, revolting, Catherine Called Birdy is an adaptation of a book from the 1990s that Dunham had read as a teenager and dreamed of adapting for ten years. Also in the cast, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper and Joe Alwyn. Dunham offers a joyful dive into rural England, where young girls are nothing but bargaining chips for their families. At 36, she admits to having wanted to tell other women’s stories. It’s successful. “When I was younger, I would have looked for the dark side of a story because that was what seemed realistic to me,” she explains in the Vanity Fair podcast, The Little Gold Men, before to specify: “I would have chosen a more uncomfortable end for my main character, because I found it more courageous. While I respect this approach to writing, I felt braver choosing a happy ending. Before, I would have found it too serious. But after the pandemic, I want to be happy.”
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