Tiny Furniture

We live in a DIY culture, where filmmakers graduate from fancy-shmancy schools and think they can just make a film about themselves and call it art. Exhibit A (or Exhibit Gazillion): Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture (2010). A glorified home movie. Tiny Furniture tells the story of recent college grad, Aura (Lena Dunham, who also wrote and directed the film), who must deal with the transition from alternative, lazy student to an actual full-grown woman. Post- grad confusion constantly pedals itself across independent cinema, and frankly, I'm sick of it. The narrative is rather dull, but this isn't anything out of the ordinary for mumblecore. However, I do admire Lena Dunham and her character as Aura (where she is essentially playing herself). She may not be anything special, but she's real. She's accurate—naïve, narcissistic, and completely disoriented. Ultimately, I think that's why this film (amongst other post-grad films) is so successful. It's built for a certain demographic—post-grad losers. They (We) find these movies comforting because the lost characters are just like them (us). I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy this movie, but I probably wouldn't have hadn't I found it extremely relatable to my current lifestyle. Hopefully, this film will work as a serious reality-check for those of us graduating soon. I don't want to be Aura. That's for sure. Aside from its tired plot, Lena Dunham actually has a great visual eye and hopefully this will reflect in her future work, when she isn't delving into self-exploitation any longer.

There are some big-name movie stars and directors still alive today who were involved in legendary movies of the 1960's and 1970's, reputed to be Hollywood's Golden Age of Cinema. Although many younger audiences are being re-introduced to them thanks to the advent of DVD and Netflix, many of the films' original stars and/or directors refuse to do commentary for their movies, claiming it ruins the experience of their films because it gives the audience too much information to thoroughly enjoy the movie for what it is.

That being said, I went in to see "Tiny Furniture" with increased anticipation knowing that it was written and directed by its star, 24-year-old Lena Dunham, who also happens to be making her feature-film debut. I had heard that the film was shot on a shoestring budget, and that Dunham's real life mother and sister were to be playing her mother and sister on film as well. Taking those facts into account actually made me enjoy this film immensely, and didn't take anything away from it as far as I could tell.

"Tiny Furniture" taps into familiar territory for recent graduates in their 20's (myself included), as protagonist Aura (Dunham) moves back to her New York City home after graduating from college in the Midwest. She's not sure what to do with her life, but what makes her character even more interesting is her inner conflict. She desires independence as many college graduates do, but she has mixed feelings about leaving her spacious apartment occupied by her artist mother and precocious, college-bound sister. One of my personal favorite quotes is when her mother asks her, "Do you like living here?" and her response is simply, "What kind of question is that? I love living here!" It's certainly not the way I felt when I moved back in with my parents after graduating college, but it's understandable in her case.

The story gets a bit bogged down by subplots that seem to take up unnecessary space in the film, like when an amateur filmmaker from out of town (Alex Karpovsky) crashes at her family's place while finding a place to live. This section of the film seems to come and go with no real explanation or resolution of its significance.

There were also some lapses in storytelling, resulting in the film feeling draggy in some sections, not to mention ending on a slightly inconclusive and very questionable note. Still, those weaknesses did not deter the strengths of this film. The movie is shot incredibly well, with lighting pitch perfect in almost every shot. It's hard to believe that it was shot almost entirely using digital cameras, and it probably shows a new trend in the next generation of filmmakers.

The acting by all those involved was also very convincing, without any hint of rookie mistakes such as looking directly at the camera. I particularly thought Jemima Kirke, who played Aura's best friend Charlotte, provided great comic relief, and was a refreshingly colorful presence whenever she was on screen. Both Dunham and Kirke are destined for bigger and better roles in the future. It also was a brave move for Dunham to hire her real life mother and sister to play opposite her, and it made the interactions between the three of them highly believable.

Dunham doesn't stop there with the brave moves, though. What other actress, either first starting out or already established, would put themselves up on screen wearing nothing but a T-shirt? She does it, though, and it's because the character she plays, like the story she wrote, is true to herself. Not many other filmmakers are that bold.

While the story is not perfect, and some scenes fail to contribute greatly to the story, "Tiny Furniture" is still a very auspicious movie that film school graduates would probably kill to make. It is similar to Martin Scorsese's debut film "Who's That Knocking At My Door" (1968) and Spike Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" (1986) in that it's a small movie with a lot of promise. While it may not be for everyone, Lena Dunham is still a young filmmaker to watch, and I can't wait to see what she comes out with next.

i watch a lot of movies, on average 3-4 a week, in all sorts of genres, and i tend to be forgiving of indie filmmakers... but i can only say that this "movie" is an utter waste of celluloid. there is simply no reason for it to have ever been made. beyond the poor acting, uninspired plot and pointless story, not a single character is likable or interesting. i kept watching in the hope that i might find something to care about, with regard to any of the characters, but that hope was in vain. this is the kind of directionless ego-project that gives indie film a bad name. as with books that are written just so someone can claim the title of "author", movies made just so someone can say they made a movie should be banned.

"I'm in a post-graduation malaise," Aura to her mother

Aura (Lena Dunham) and her mother (Laurie Simmons, Denham's real mom) are a generation apart, and it shows. In Tiny Furniture (a reference to her mother's collection) Aura has drifting back to mom by returning after graduation to their upscale Tribeca apartment, which her mother easily covers as a successful artist. Aura has no prospects to be so successful, struggling as she is just trying to sustain through a nowhere position as a restaurant hostess, not the filmmaker she'd like to be.

While the apartment is minimalist white, sharp, and clean, Aura is heavy, homely, and slow. The honesty of not casting a hottie as most directors would is one of the film's noble features, and that this director casts herself in unflattering circumstances (Aura has her first complete sex, boring I would say, in a street construction pipe and wears ill-fitting clothes) is a sign of the realism rare in most contemporary comedies about 20 somethings. In fact, director Dunham has achieved a universality anyway because the players in this comedy aren't a whole lot different from the young sit-com residents of the last 30 years, except they all had jobs or prospects, and alas, Aura has none.

I didn't enjoy the film as I had hoped because except for the pipe and some smart Juno-like dialogue at the beginning with her sister and her mom, nothing much at all happens. If you compare Tiny Furniture with Manhattan-based Seinfeld, where it's about nothing but really something, then this is a tiny comedy where shifting around the furniture still results in a boring set up.

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.