Romance on the screen has never been colder. Maybe that's just true.

The first time I saw Too muchLena Dunham's return to the font after a seven-year break, it felt incredibly disappointing, visually flat, almost defiantly unpleasant, in his dependence on Anglo-American culture, which collapses for charm when Mary-Kate and Ashley get a royal guard to crack a smile. The premise: Jess (played by Hacks'Megan Stalter) is a New Yorker who works in advertising production and has the chance to move to London if her relationship implies catastrophically. (Dunham, as we always dare to like her characters, broke into the apartment of her ex in the first episode and terrorized his new influencer girlfriend while he was swinging a garden gnom.) Jess arrives in London and has a chance encounter with Felix (Will Sharpe), a broke musician, in a particularly vile pub toilet. Both are unhappy in different but complementary species – Jess says Felix how to wash his hands, Felix helps Jess to come home when she accidentally ordered her to Heathrow.

These are difficult times to be a romantic, especially on Netflix. Two years ago on one New Yorker Alexandra Schwartz complained about the modern state of ROM-COM that the most important quality for every romance is: “You have to believe that these two people want to be together and you have to shop.” At this front, Too much hardly even tried. Stalter is crazy like Jess, and Sharpe gives Felix out of hand. But as a screen lover, the couple have an almost negative chemistry, comes together with a shrug and stays together, which feels like inertia. Initially, this put my teeth on the edge – two characters with apparently little interest in the fact that they are paired with the chaotic insistence of a child who kisses their soft toy. But the more I came back to the show, the more loose, unromantic approach to love looks deliberately. Jess and Felix Pulen not because they are dizzy with FeelingDrunk nearby, intimacy and connection, but because everyone offers something special that the other person needs. Too much is put together by the working title, and the names of his episodes nod some sticky Rome coms that the company served in the past few days: Four weddings and a funeralPresent Notting Hill. But in the place where the heart of the show should be, is instead pure pragmatism: this is love for a cold climate.

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If you compare Too much With Celine Songs new film, MaterialistIn which every figure increases romantic views with the agenda of a personnel manager, you can feel a topic. Can we actually afford it? fall in love Now? In this economy? Dunham presents falling in love as nonsensical or even destructive: the best episode of Too much Is one who is one who appears to be a seven-year relationship with ZEV (Michael Zeg), a wannabe music author who appears one night like a white knight in a bar when she lost her friends, and her pizza (noble) appears (he secures another piece) and immediately dazargle Jess, who achieves her family, the kissial massage, even with songs, which is her Gractrands motted. However, it quickly acidifies. When she pulls in with him, he is outraged that so much of her things is pink. He mocks after her love for Miley Cyrus Power Ballads and mocks her need for affection. “I swear, you dress as you fuck you Sometimes the people, Jess, ”he tells her, when she puts on a sailor Smock to go out. The longer she loves him, the more contemptuous he becomes.

In contrast, Felix is cool from the start. Nobody is better than Dunham in writing with likeable fuckboys, men in different phases of the arrested development, which are uncomfortable in a uniquely beguiling way. In the pub, Felix Jess treats like a kind of curiosity (in fact she wears the same sailor Smock, from which we later learn that ZEV was so cruel). Only when he sees the cosiness of Jess' rental apartment is something Seems tempting in his thoughts, like a modern Elizabeth Bennet, who checks her feelings for Mr. Darcy after the first visit to Pemberley. Jess, something by chance, tries to kiss Felix; Felix, worried, admits that he has and goes a friend. He goes around a bit and listens to Fiona Apple and then smokes and then returns to Jess' place, where a paramedic with the paramedic with a baby face to the shower after accidentally set her nightgown. He remains a bit incredible.

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Too much Gestures on the Rome Com, but it seems more in love with Sitcom, especially in low-fiction, nervous, slightly manic mode of British comedies on BBC Three: FleebagPresent PullPresent coupling. Compared to Dunham's GirlHis direction and kinematography were expressly emulated Woody Allen and Mike Mills, is a strangely inconspicuous show that is typically composed cheaply on the British TV viewer. In a bottle episode early, Jess and Felix stay awake in their apartment all night, have sex, eat to take away and ignore the emotional information of the other. (He tells her that he was equipped by an ex an ex an ex an ex an excellent food with an expression of empty despair. Later, Jess shovels cold pasta into her mouth with the same vacancy.) The characters make antic, without sticking, which require little explanation and often oppose logic. Felix claims unemployment and tells the official that he has no time to write music when he gets a job. Jess goes in place, who is sought with a Hotshot director, has almost sex with him in a fire-leading four-poster bed and then appears outside of Felix 'window and asks him to collect with her. Jennifer Saunders seems to play a character late in the series that is identical to Absolutely fabulousEdina, to the same styling and the vocal delivery.

With the help of flashback -episodes, however, the show also determines why Felix and Jess may be attracted to each other. Jess, who is still from her separation and friendship in London in London, finds immediate stability in Felix as someone who takes care of her, even if she at least seems to see it subliminal through him. Like so many Dunham heroines, Jess is a confusing mix of intuition and deception. It offers Felix a common bank account after they were barely a week together, but also correctly identified that his lack of ambition fits your work pride. If Stalter sometimes seems less convincing as an actor than Dunham pulled out the combination, it is an extremely difficult register to play in a guest. Felix, whose childhood was open and unstable, seems to see something like immediate security in Jess: not just a warm person with a house that is much more inviting than his chaotic croced full of eco-warriors, but an insta family. If your relationship skips the intoxicating, obsessive crush phase to get directly into a comfortable, strong, domestic mode, then it may be what both really long for.

Initially something about Too muchThe insistence on quoting Rome coms in his episode titles while she contradicted the romance so persistently felt annoying for me. The quality that attracts us, for example, the tortured off-on dynamics by Connell and Marianne Normal people or the unbreakable bond between Nora and Hae sung in Past life is the idea that love is somehow transcendent, that it increases people above the level of mere existence. But realistic, what is love if she doesn't care about it? And what are care and attention if not an expression of tenderness and consideration? Dunham buried clues continuously Too much That seems to suggest what she thinks about men and women: marriage, Felix 'father tells his wife late on the show, comes from the Latin words Matermeans “mother” and MoniaWhat “activity” means – it is about preparing a girl for a mother, and in many ways both Felix and Jess long for what long. “You are like this alien,” says Jess in the last episode, “but you also feel at home.”