Tiny Furniture

Written and directed by Lena Dunham, who also acted the part of the lead character, Aura, "Tiny Furniture" is a worthy accomplishment for a variety of reasons. Most importantly - with a budget of $50K - it demonstrates the production quality that can be achieved with minimal funds and a skeleton crew. The film tells the story of a young woman, just graduated from from film studies at Oberlin and upset over a recent romantic break-up, who returns to her artist mother's Tribeca apartment in New York where a younger sister also resides. Even if the storyline is seriously thin, the result is a witty look at the supposedly crucial dilemmas of an immature, privileged, self-absorbed female college graduate who finds herself on the threshold of adulthood. Coincidentally (or probably not) this narrative framework mirrored Ms Dunham's real-life circumstances at the time when she made the film - and she utilized her own mother, sister and friends to play their respective parts in this fictionalized version of her homecoming.

The film leads us through a sequence of Aura's everyday issues that she consistently turns into minor melodramas. These include communication issues with her mother, free-loading boyfriends, infantile sibling rivalry confrontations, employment problems and humiliating sexual misadventures - all of which are portrayed with a mixture of ironic humor and pathos. "Tiny Furniture" is beautifully photographed on a Canon Digital SLR, and the entire cast give appropriately cosmopolitan performances, with Jemima Kirke stealing the show as Aura's hilariously out-to-lunch BFF Charlotte.

This film is essentially about a young college graduate trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. The fact that, throughout the movie, things only get more confusing for her, only adds to the realism of the film. I have read some reviews where people claim the movie is TOO pointless, or too confusing, or just generally lacking something. I understand this position, but to the people who think this, I kind of feel like they are taking the place of Aura's mother when Aura says to her mom "you never listen to me". This is a movie that requires you to heavily invest in the characters, so if you dislike them immediately, you will probably not like this movie, either.

Aura is a great character, one of the most realistic characters I have seen in a while. Even though I am a male, and am nowhere near her level of wealth nor as self-depressed, I am around her age and I could surprisingly still easily relate to her. Mostly because the time when you define yourself seems so important, and yet it is mostly a time where not a lot happens. Despite her 'hard time' she is still generally upbeat and curious towards everything, because I believe her character wants to believe, like her mother says, "your 20s don't matter that much...I never think about the past".

She is, however, a very vapid character. She tends to choose the wrong people to hang out with, and she is somewhat weak (I mean, she moans the whole movie that no one cares, but the one friend who truly does, she basically shafts). Yet, she is likable because she has flaws and she embraces them. We rarely see her in fits of emo pity; instead we see an intelligent, very funny young woman simply trying to escape the shadows of her family and overcome the awkwardness of young adulthood.

There are flaws here, but the writing was amazing (despite a lack of plot) - the dialogue is realistic and often hilarious. The composition of shots is brilliant, and the apartment's white walls draw beautiful contrast in certain shots. And the acting was stellar considering the indie nature and family sourcing which Dunham used to make the film.

It is not perfect, but it was an enjoyable experience, and I can imagine it only gets better with repeat viewings...since you know what to expect, you can focus more on the 'tiny' details that truly make up the triumph of the film.

An interesting aspect of young Lena Dunham's feature is that some of the most favorable reviews and interviews never mention the word "Mumblecore." There has to be a reason for that. If Tiny Furniture is annoying, it may be because it's smoother than most Mumblecore movies and that only brings out the laziness, the unambitious self-satisfaction of the genre/school/orientation of the young educated white Americans who've turned on their digital cameras and gained encouragement, or been called cool, for their DIY efforts to make feature films about themselves, which is to say, about nothing much. Tiny Furniture is Mumblecore that's suave enough to make you wonder why there isn't more to it. The clumsiness of other work of this generation makes one think there's something (maybe just raw "reality") behind it. Polish and self-possession in this director makes one suspect "reality" isn't all that interesting sometimes. Would anybody but film students and a tiny demographic find solace or food for thought in this picture? Tiny Furniture's protagonist, Lena herself, has just finished college and returns to the (admittedly somewhat chilly) "womb" of her highly successful mom's and self-confident teenage sister's big, all-white, hi-tech Tribeca loft. Dunham may be called Aura in the film instead of Lena (a name NY Times critic Manohla Dargis weaves a fancy critical-theory explanation for), but -- what is mildly unusual, but not very -- the filmmaker/actress managed to cast her own successful artist mother Laurie Simmons as Aura's mom and and her self-confident sister Grace Dunham as Aura's sister Nadine, and set much of the action in her mom's actual home. Not too much of a stretch there. Aura gets a job as a hostess at a restaurant around the corner and consorts with two freeloader would-be boyfriends: Keith (David Call), a sou-chef who cadges drugs off her and has sex with her in a pipe, and Jed (Alex Karpofsky, a Mumblecore regular, here an cutesy YouTuber and insufferable person) who only wants a place to sleep, and gets it, till Aura's mother comes back from a trip.

A positive aspect of Tiny Furniture (the title presumably refers to Aura's and Lena's mom's post-feminist photographic artwork about female roles) is that if it's sluggish and meandering, it's also good-natured. Mom and sis nudge Aura for taking up space and not doing much, but they're still friendly and polite, and Siri (Simmons' name here) tells Aura this is her home and is even kind enough to assure her she is probably going to become much more successful than she herself is. (A little research reveals that Lena Dunham's father, Carroll Dunham, is a successful artist himself; he did not, however, consent to "act" here.) Perhaps looking for signs of earlier doubts despite the current maternal success, Aura finds her mother's journals from when she was her age and reads them (and doubt she does indeed find there). Her mother doesn't mind this snooping.

Another feature that you may or may not like is Dunham's penchant for disrobing for the camera, showing her pear shape and small breasts without shame (as she should: there's nothing wrong with how she looks), and walking around the loft clad in T-shirt without pants. Aura just got a degree in Film Theory, again doubtless true, though the alma mater, Obrerlin, isn't plugged.

The material is Mumblecore, but the people don't mumble. Dunham favors articulate, unhesitant speech. She even indulges in a witty former best friend with good looks and an English accent, the drug-hoovering, wine-gulping and quite entertaining Charlotte (Jemima Kirke). If all the characters were like Charlotte, and Nadine's misbehaving preppie pals got to speck at their party, this might have a remote chance of approaching the sophistication of Whit Stillman's (1990) Metropolitan. But Metropolitan is about social life and Tiny Furniture is just about a self-absorbed young woman who never leaves the neighborhood.

Dunham's film has been acclaimed at the South by Southwest Festival (an ideal venue, to which it was granted late admission), then gotten generally favorable reviews and interviews in the NY Times and The New Yorker. I've given Mumblecore my time and my attention, but now I begin to wonder, if this is the template talented beginners are going to follow. Is there nothing better? This film made me badly need to see a HongKong gangster movie. If the depths of genre seem to offer more for the imagination and the heart to contemplate, something must be off.

TINY FURNITURE should be commended - a young filmmaker uses her mom's loft and her actual mom and sister to play her mom and sister - shoots it on a HD video camera for about 50k and becomes an Indie Film darling! That is amazing and I love hearing stories like this. Dunham is very talented and there are great scenes in this movie but the rave reviews are waaaaay over the top. Slow down. The film just meanders - it starts to repeat itself and I found the ending lacking. I do not need everything all tied up in a bow for me and I love films that just mosey a long (Stranger in Paradise, etc.) but after awhile - the film does just seem like a bunch of scenes stitched together without any payoff of any kind. I get that many young people will totally relate with the story of a college graduate having no idea what to do with her life and Dunham is perfect in the role - in fact, it was refreshing to see a woman as a lead who looks like her - she is dumpy with thick legs, a big butt and she walks around a lot of the movie pantless - which is great - that's how a lot of people walk around in the privacy of their own home. I'm glad to hear this indie has led to a bunch of other projects for her - congrats. I hope she learns how to write a better story next time. (Oh - and the girl who plays her crazy friend Charlotte is absolutely terrific!!)

The saga of the Millennial college graduate who moves back home and begins a maddening search for direction — that's what Lena Dunham sets off to depict in "Tiny Furniture" and she does it in the most Millennial way possible: completely DIY including casting her mother and sister to play — her mother and sister.

Dunham captures the mundanity of post-undergrad life at home, even though her character Aura's life is a little more unusual; home is a Manhattan loft where mom (Laurie Simmons) is an a photographer/visual artist (she actually is in real life) of solid notoriety. Sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) lives there too, but she's in the no-pressure zone of high school. There isn't so much a plot synopsis as a list of friends new and old and other influences who make Aura's new life as a young adult and dreams of becoming a successful artist complicated and messy.

The authenticity of Dunham's voice as a writer rings clear. A lot of it is the semi- autobiographical form; it's impossible for any peers watching (and maybe some a little older) not to relate in some way to Aura's "struggle." It might be nice if more stuff happened in the film instead of a whole lot of stuff that could be stuff but doesn't ever become stuff, but there's also something refreshing about taking it in as a contemporary portrait of an emerging generation. Also, you could argue that there's a certain poetic truth to the fact that nothing really happens.

The "action" is how Aura navigates internal and external pressures. Everyone around her, for example, seems to have found a measure of success. Her mother, for one, has been successful forever; she meets a successful-ish YouTube star in Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who's talking to networks about a TV show and even her sister was recognized nationally for her poetry, which Aura can't help but demean. Then there's her oldest childhood friend, Charlotte (Jemima Kirke, Dunham's actually oldest childhood friend) who sports the couldn't-care-less attitude that plays in contrast to it all.

Aura's first foray into the "real world" involves getting a job, since that's what people are supposed to do, but of course being a daytime closed-hours hostess at a restaurant is a far cry from her aspirations, even though she seems to believe its in her best interest. Throughout the course of the film, Dunham exposes a bit more of Aura's psychology, namely the complex nature of her relationship to her family and home in the specific and broadest sense.

Done for as low a budget as possible, the actors here are all amateurs but it doesn't show. Dunham's strength is obviously her writing, but she's a sufficient stand in for the average 22-year-old, and as a director, she makes the most of it with some interesting shot framing to bring varying perspectives to the talk-heavy action.

"Tiny Furniture" is a really impressive debut for a fledgling filmmaker, especially one whose talent is writing and simply needed to round up a cast and crew to realize her story into some kind of finished product. It could certainly use a plot, but Dunham is able to effectively touch on the melange of post-college emotions in the 21st century in a way that's yet to be articulated, and which she effectively continued to expound upon in her HBO series "Girls," which this movie made possible.

Dunham recognizes the complexity of her generation. There is a self-centered component, there's a familial dependency, but there's also a mixed bag of influences and life philosophies that can take hold of the wheel at any moment. We are pitiable and pitiful, lost yet driven, naive and all too aware of how the world works.

~Steven C

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