Tiny Furniture (2010, Lena Dunham): I have to admit that I didn't go into Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham's 2010 directorial debut expecting much, I was just looking for something to watch on Netflix streaming that wasn't too long or serious. Girls, Dunham's HBO series has been blowing up the internet lately and I have found it both endearing and slightly irritating so I was interested to see how this would compare. From what I know of Dunham, I was sure that this movie would be about how the poor little rich girl didn't know what she wanted to do with her life and would whine her way through the whole movie (too close to home?). In a a way this movie is exactly that: Aura (Dunham) has just graduated from a liberal arts college in Ohio with a filmmaking degree, her boyfriend has broken up with her and she has to come back and live with her successful artist mother and overachieving high school age sister. Immediately, Aura feels adrift in her old home and begins to act out. Her misadventures include inviting a guy who has no interest in her to stay at her apartment while her mother and sister are out of town, getting a job as a day hostess at a restaurant, hanging out with her party girl friend Charlotte (a delightful Jemima Kirke) and having sex with her dirty hot chef crush in a tube on the street.
I thought the movie was going to ask the viewer to sympathize with someone like Aura. Instead it makes fun of her and other privileged people like her. When writing this review I was planning on writing a sentence contrasting Aura's good qualities to her bad but I realized that most of the things we see in her are weaknesses and bad qualities (entitlement, pettiness, cruelty, self obsession). I think this is a strength of Dunham's and she has the ability to both endear and frustrate the viewer, sometimes in the same scene. Dunham also has a very interesting relationship with the camera and isn't afraid to look bad on screen, sometimes literally in the unflattering outfits and way she shoots her body. At times, I was almost horrified with the way she would shoot herself without a shred of vanity. The performances are generally acceptable but I wouldn't say any are outright amazing. The two weak spots to me would be Laurie Simmons, Dunham's mother who plays her mother in the film. I found some of line readings excruciatingly mannered. Dunahm's screenplay was honest, raw and at times heart wrenching, and writing is Dunham's greatest strength. She has a flair for dialogue and mixes comedy and pathos is a way that is reminiscent of the best of Woody Allen. For all of her strength as a writer, as a director she has a long way to go. Some of the directorial quirks were also a bit dristracting, particularly the recurring use of a static shot that becomes vaguely blurry.
Tiny Furniture both lightly ribs and reassures the viewer that sometimes you don't have to know exactly where you are going in life (I just wouldn't recommend having sex in a tube on the street to figure it out).
Julie
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