Tiny Furniture (15)

Out in cinemas this week: Tiny Furniture. Hardly worth the price of admission, but very much worth reading the review to find out why!

Tiny Furniture (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Lena Dunham’s second feature film as writer, director and star is a semi-autobiographical coming of age comedy. Technically it is several steps ahead of her last effort ‘Creative Nonfiction’, but covers much the same ground about the life of a young woman (Aura, played by Dunham) with a frustratingly unknowable future. In the former film she was a student, whereas here she is a graduate returning home to her family (played by Dunham’s actual family!) where she must either remember who she is, or discover who she is going to be.

Aura drifts lazily between different aspects of her new life, from finding work to relating to her family, and most of all looking for boys. Unsurprisingly the film presents a distinctly feminine point of view, with everything from dolling up to recently grown body parts getting a mention. Tiny Furniture is much more likely to appeal to female audiences.

Aura finds herself in adventures involving meeting new faces, experimenting with drugs, sex, and finding a job. She goes to parties, scolds her sister for filling the house with noisy teens, and invites a man she barely knows to live with her and share a bed. She fumbles through this early stage of her none too eventful life, getting burnt here, finding pleasure there... unsophisticatedly getting her bearings on her existence as many do. End of film; and that right there is the trouble... Tiny Furniture doesn’t have much substance. It’s like a dramatised diary entry of a woman in her mid-twenties put on screen for all to see... you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to spot the exhibitionist in Lena Dunham.

The thing that is impressive is Dunham’s obvious growth as an artist. Where Creative Nonfiction looked frankly home made, this is shot with an elegant confidence rarely seen from young filmmakers. Though it may seem lacklustre, Tiny Furniture is a definite gauntlet for wannabe filmmakers everywhere to get off their posteriors, film the scripts saved on their coffee stained laptops and get them in front of an audience.

The curious soundtrack by newcomer Teddy Blanks is infectious and uplifting, a perfect fit for Dunham’s endearingly Woody Allen-esque mumblecore work. Edit-wise the film could have done without the final twenty minutes or so, with Dunham finally succumbing to repeating herself self-indulgently.

Although most will likely find it an overlong navel gazing fest, the cheeky laughs and likable, if not memorable, vibe make this an undiminishable achievement for Dunham.