This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Christian Sinclair’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
I really wanted to like this film. I really did. A film graduate returning home and figuring out what to do with her life is a good enough premise, but all in all this film is just annoying.
It’s written and directed by and also starring Lena Dunham as well as her family playing her family and her home is shot in her actual Tribeca loft home. All of this starts to feel a bit autobiographical, which given the context of the plot, makes me dislike it more.
I feel as if Dunham wants me to sympathise with her character as she struggles away but ultimately she just comes across as a whiney, lazy loser. All her choices and actions throughout the film are irritating to say the least. While it must be hard to have a successful mother and a high achieving younger sister, her reaction is to mope around the house with Jed, a youtube celebrity jerk who mooches off of her, while she repeatedly tells everyone about how she’s having a hard time.
The one character who seems like she could be a saving grace is her college buddy Frankie who she’s due to move in with, but she’s given little screen time as Dunham spends most of the film ignoring her and chasing Jed and Keith, a pill popping sous chef who from the off seems hell bent on cheating on his girlfriend.
Referring back to the autobiographical concept, this film feels as if Dunham truly is a mopey graduate who’s put together a feature film all about her in order to give her rub her ego the right way.
The narrative is severely lacking in character arcs as most of the arguments are fairly superficial and resolved quickly while most bad decisions are left with little real consequence.
One thing this film really does have going for it is the cinematography by Jody Lee Lipes, especially since the film was shot on a Canon 7D as opposed to a higher range film camera. Lot’s of the shots are beautifully composed and everything generally has a good look to it.
I feel the cinematography is one of the reasons this film has been received so well by critics because apart from that, this is just the melodramatic whining of a self centred graduate