What do you need to be, to be really funny? Stand-up comedienne Carmen Lynch knows what it takes. As she wanders from make-up mirror to performance stage, via Portland’s woozy streets and an all-night grocery store, we’re given an intimate insight into a talented individual. The city’s saturated lights and dying, showbiz neon become Carmen’s passing backdrop. She confronts herself - her looks, her dreams, the weird rituals of mating in the modern world - by confronting her audiences. Sometimes they laugh with her. Sometimes they don’t laugh at all.

Carmen has a loose, voyeuristic, improvisational mood that reflects Sevigny’s interest, “in making a short-film about process, being a woman, celebrity and ego.

It’s about the love of the craft, the love of the art, the repetition of it.” The script developed by Carmen Lynch first writing her own stand-up material and then Sevigny building intuitively around that. “The film captures a lot of who I am,” says Lynch. “When you’re on the road, being alone doesn’t even feel like being alone anymore. A lot of us comedians are introverts, observing and listening.”

Carmen, by Chloë Sevigny, is the 13th commission from Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the short-film series by women who critically celebrate femininity in the 21st century.