Title - Tiny Furniture (2010)
Director - Lena Dunham
Country - United States
A starkly honest but often frustrating examination of the often confusing world and mindset of a post college graduate as she attempts to come to grips with the reality of the state of her current life. Described as partly autobiographical, Lena Dunham the writer/director of the film also plays the main character Aura who represents a specific character trait of the creator taken to the logical extreme. To further blur the line of reality, Dunham has also cast her real life mother and sister play themselves in the film and she has used her Mother's actual Tribeca loft as their home in the film. While eventually this helps to further cement the realistic nature of their interactions, initially it seems a tad contrived.
The movie starts off a little awkwardly as Aura (Lena Dunham) arrives home after a long journey and seems to be immediately out of sorts in her own home. He sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) immediately resents her presence and begins barking out the current house ground rules with regard towards her ownership and responsibilities. Her mother Siri (Laurie Simmons) does nothing to refute her sister's claims and seems to regard her return with a somewhat detached interest as she busily goes about her in house job of photography.
The initial conversations between the three (although specifically involving her sister), seem particularly contrived and seem to be working much too hard to be as cool and clever as possible and it feels a bit strained and awkward. There's even a Coen Brothers type of a character absurdist running joke initially as whenever Aura is looking for some kind of supply her mother simply tells her it's located in a particular "white drawer" - cut to a shot of Aura standing in front of a wall of monochromatic drawers that are pervasive throughout the loft. While at first this feels like a joke fallen flat, it does demonstrate how out of sorts Aura feels in her own household and how much of a disconnect there is between her and her family.
Once Aura starts trying to create some sort of life for herself and starts mixing it up with other characters then the movie really starts to spread its wings. Although the film is ideally an exploration of a directionless graduate fully realizing the gravity of their situation but doing everything in their power to avoid the harsh reality of it all, it does so in measured paces. There's no attempt to tie together plot strings and develop characters to a dramatic or life-changing conclusion which may be frustrating for many viewers. But what it does focus on is the dreary quotidian existence of unmotivated youths down to the tiniest bland detail as they focus only on the immediate.
Although Aura makes some attempts at starting a life, these attempts are deliberately feeble and short-lived as Aura becomes frustrated that she is not receiving any kind of immediate gratification that it's obvious she feels she deserves. She even makes a stab at having a big vocal outburst indicating her frustration and painting herself as the victim, yet it all rings knowingly false as all Aura does is make repeated excuses to retreat back to her mother's womb and a childhood safety zone that no longer exists. Dunham creates a character that increasingly becomes unlikeable but yet manages to stay vulnerable enough that you feel like you can't completely give up on her. Honestly there are several moments in the film where I wasn't sure if I wanted to slap her around or hold and comfort her.
Aura's lazy but somewhat desperate attempts to make both financial and social connections are as awkward and ill-conceived as they are sad. They speak volumes not only about her character's plight, but about her generation's frequent sense of entitlement as they want to be recognized and heavily rewarded for accomplishing at time the most mundane things. A particularly defining character is Aura's hopeful but apparently completely sexually disinterested boyfriend Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who is paraded around by himself and others as an incredibly important Youtube star. Despite the fact that he is supposedly in town being courted my several networks for a production deal, he is apparently homeless and uses all the negative guilt trip lines he can think of to bully his way into Aura's place when her mother and sister are out of town. Despite his horrific behavior, Aura continues to think positive thoughts as she assumes a person so creative must be a worthy catch.
Aura's other boyfriend hopeful is another example of how the film castigates the typical naive twenty something cultural ideal. Although Keith (David Call) is just a grumpy cook in an small but trendy dining establishment, her old childhood friend Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) immediately ascribes a possible cultural superiority to him simply because she's seen him reading books of philosophy. But in the end Keith turns out to be just like everybody else that just has some immediate needs and looks to others as sources of quick gratification. Despite being originally presented as something of a train wreck, Charlotte is oddly the only one that seems to be somewhat grounded and calls the bulls*** as she sees it which comes to an incredibly funny conclusion when she finally encounters Jed the Youtube star.
Overall I found it to be a satisfying but somewhat frustrating journey as the film merely presents to you an important but unremarkable portion of a character's life. The importance is not profound, but the journey needed to be made in order for the character to eventually develop. Although it's not entirely clear if the events that unfolded will have a serious affect on Aura, one would have to imagine that it would as the emptiness of her life at the moment is strongly mirrored in the notes of her mother's diary - a woman whom Aura holds in high esteem. A very interesting film, but the lack of a typical plot structure and character development may be off putting for some.
Recommended.