Tiny Furniture

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.

Certainly this film will not be everyone's cup of tea. But I'm a sucker for movies that are light on plot and heavy on letting us just hang out with some interesting characters for awhile. The dialogue here is so natural I thought perhaps they were simply ad libbing. The chemistry between the mother and daughters is totally real (makes sense -- they are a real family), and the film perfectly captures the that feeling of lacking any direction following graduation from college. It's true that nothing much happens in the film -- it's more about the nature of relationships: renewing old ones, letting friends go, trying out new lovers, choosing the wrong people -- all while trying to figure out what it means to be an adult.

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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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.