Those familiar with Lena Dunham’s work, specifically her recent fantastic work on Girls, know she’s well versed in depicting awkward sex scenes on camera. The fact that she herself gets naked more than anyone else on her show speaks to this fearlessness of showing things in complete honesty. And that’s not even mentioning the messed up stuff between her and Adam Driver in the show. It might be one of the first shows where my response to seeing people be affectionate to one another actual aligns with the experience I have seeing people be overly affectionate in real life. In both cases it’s usually like, “Aww…ok, ew.”
Tiny Furniture was what catapulted her into the cultural consciousness though, and one of the reasons is the embarrassingly realistic sex scene between Dunham’s character Aura and her co-worker, which is short, unsatisfying, and takes place in an outdoor drainage pipe.
There’s a place for well lit, romantic scenes of a sexual nature in movies, but it’s important also to remember that much of this is based in fantasy. It expresses a certain sexual experience, and there’s a reason it’s commonly expressed in this way, but it leaves out many other aspects of romance and sex, which involves a hell of a lot of awkwardness that we have a tendency to try to ignore and erase from memory. Showing characters who go through this same awkwardness, especially if it’s one step on the road to developing an actual solid and sweet relationship, is refreshingly honest and makes us feel less lonely to know others may feel the same sort of awkwardness about it all that we might. And awkwardness handled well is one of the most attractive things about people anyway. Who says romance isn’t uncomfortable at times?