TV Talk

Is Lena Dunham's Girls the new Sex and the City?

It’s time for a completely unsurprising confession: I love Girls. Lena Dunham’s Girls, that is. The highly polarizing HBO comedy has made a fan out of me, despite instigating hatred in many others. Scores of articles are published daily, lamenting Dunham and her cohorts for being too privileged, too naked, too whiny.

Yet for every hater there is a girl who sees a sliver of herself in the characters of this awkward group of Brooklynites. There’s free spirit Jessa, quirky Hannah, uptight Marnie, and the oddly relatable and undersexed Shoshanna. And it reminds me of something.

A teenager raised with the spoils of premium cable, I lapped up Sex and the City voraciously, albeit age inappropriately. I learned about waxing from Samantha, read Vogue along with Carrie, fought the feminism fight with Miranda, and even dreamed about Mr. Right with Charlotte. Yet when Carrie et al. said their final goodbyes, so did I, closing the book on the big city lifestyle I knew even then was unattainable.

If Sex and the City represents the glitz and glamour of being a single woman in the city, Girls is the hair you pull from the drain after one too many updos.

And then I went to college. In between classes, girls would stay home and marathon the show in syndication. They bought the DVDs. They had theme parties. They went on tours of New York. But, most notably, they identified themselves by how they related to the show.

Sexually adventurous and outspoken? You’re a total Samantha. The best-dressed articulate friend? Carrie, to a T. Prudish? Charlotte. Duh. I was once reluctantly pegged as 75 percent Miranda, with a touch of Carrie and a dash of Magda. The maid. Clearly I wasn’t winning this game.

Yet women were making relationship decisions based on the age-old WWCD, mentality. What would Carrie do? She’d do nothing. She’s fictional.

Conveniently also a property of the Home Box Office, Girls is giving women a whole new set of archetypes in which to fit their personalities — grungier, more spendthrift archetypes. I’ll put it this way: If Sex and the City represents the glitz and glamour of being a single woman in the city, Girls is the hair you pull from the drain after one too many updos. Or at the very least, the mascara under your eyes after a long night out.

Dunham’s Hannah Horvath is awkward. She possesses a more typical body type, and she most certainly isn’t afraid to show it on screen. Sure, she gets financial support from her parents — and doesn’t take kindly to having it relinquished — but she lives in a totally feasible apartment in a neighborhood not inhabited solely by socialites. She wears normal, even dumpy, clothes. She wore a sleeping bag and a mesh muscle tank all in a two-week span, for god’s sake.

That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with the show. Though free-spirited, self-centered Jessa is a jetsetter without a care in the world who marries an investment banker after denying him a threesome. Marnie is uptight and unlovable, even when she’s completely down. Shoshanna, the JAP virgin, oddly becomes the most relatable, even when she sexts via emoji and oogles her Sex and the City poster. The irony’s not lost there. And Hannah’s proclamation that she's the voice of her generation is enough to make this writer gag at times.

Regardless of the often cringe-tastic nature of the Judd Apatow-produced comedy, there’s something real about the way these women live. And if a college student five years from now purges the DVDs and decides she wants to have a gay roommate and wear Urban Outfitters clearance-rack fare, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

In fact, I think Carrie would be proud. It’s not responsible to go into debt to support a shoe habit. At least Hannah spends her money on cupcakes.

For every hater, there is a girl who sees a sliver of herself in the characters on HBO's Girls.

unspecified

Movie Review

Bravura lead performance carries sex worker film Anora

Photo courtesy of Neon

Mikey Madison in Anora.

Writer/director Sean Baker’s filmography is full of films that aim to show stories not typically seen in mainstream movies, ones that often feel so true to life that they can be tough to watch. His latest film, Anora, is similar to his previous content in some ways, but much different in others.

Anora (Mikey Madison), aka Ani, is a stripper/sex worker who works at a club in Brooklyn. Because she can speak Russian, she is assigned to dance for Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), who she discovers is the son of a Russian oligarch. With an unlimited supply of money, he pays Ani for sex and, enjoying spending time with her, for her to pretend to be his girlfriend for a week.

That week sees them do a lot of wild stuff, most notably an impulsive trip to Las Vegas where they - almost as hastily - decide to get married. Their elopement doesn’t stay secret for long, though, with Ivan’s parents especially upset. A trio of henchmen track them down, enlisted by Ivan’s parents to force them to get the marriage annulled at all costs.

Baker is not your typical storyteller, and so even though the film has three distinct acts, they don’t play out in ways that will be familiar or comfortable for many filmgoers. Much of the first act involves Ani in states of undress, either dancing for customers or having sex with Ivan. Although the “rich guy paying for the company of a sex worker” echoes a film like Pretty Woman, the comparison doesn’t really fit, especially because the immature, video game-playing Ivan is about as far from romance as you can get.

Whatever appeal he might have had disappears in the second half of the film when he’s confronted with his parents’ displeasure. It’s here that Baker seems to play with moviegoer expectations the most. With three goons sent to get Ani and Ivan to take back what they’ve done, it feels like Baker is going to go down the typical mob movie road. Instead, what transpires can only be described as an intense farce, with Ani resisting the trio’s efforts with all her might, causing lots of comedic chaos.

What plays out throughout the film, and especially in the final act, is a disparity of wealth. While Ani being willing to have sex with a rich guy who comes into the club could be viewed in multiple ways, it does hint at her need to make money however she can. Conversely, Ivan spends money with abandon and acts accordingly, like someone who will never have a care in the world. After much frivolity, this imbalance hits like a ton of bricks in the film’s final minutes.

Madison, who’s had small but showy roles in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the reboot of Scream, proves herself to be a star in this role. She owns every part of the performance, from the New York accent to the pole dancing, and she is the fire that keeps the film humming. She is especially important because Russian actor Eydelshteyn is only intermittently effective. Special note goes to Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and Yura Borisov, the three men who come for Ani and Ivan. Each walks the line between drama and comedy especially well.

Taken at face value, Anora could be viewed as a merely titillating and somewhat shallow film. But Baker doesn’t do anything without a purpose, which is why the subtext of the story gives the film its power, with a bravura performance by Madison to put it over the top.

---

Anora is now playing in theaters.

movies film