Review of "Tiny Furniture"

Blind

After officially admitting that I like Lena Dunham's new HBO series Girls, I was excited to see the film that sparked the interest of producer Judd Apatow. Unfortunately, after I saw this film I felt like I went to an obscure but Zagat rated restaurant only to receive had a tepid meal. Yeah, it kinda sucked.

I will start out by saying that the premise is modern and very relatable. Dunham's character Aura is moving back to her New York City home after graduating college with a film degree. She is greeted by her overachieving sister and her preoccupied mother who likes to photograph tiny furniture. Aura gets a job as a day time hostess at a local restaurant, where she does nothing but flirt with the cute sous chef for $11 an hour. As someone who also earned a film degree and became a hostess upon graduating, I was quite pleased about seeing my own desperate and stupid decisions play out on screen. Of course, her story was surprisingly dissimilar. Though normally I'd say that movies that show girls scouring Craigslist in their underwear are boring, apparently so is the alternative plot offered by Dunham.

Tiny Furniture
Starring: Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham
Directed by Lena Dunham
My Opinion: Just listen to some menstrual girl bitching.
You'll save time and money for the same anti-climatic experience.

I found the stasis of the film rather surprising because Aura is at a point in her life where everything is changing. The security of being in school with but a few worries aside from keeping up in classes has just plummeted from beneath her feet, leaving her to float to a post-college home that proves much less welcoming and comfortable as it did in the past. Yes, her friends are still there, but her family is waiting for her to move out. In some ways, Tiny Furniture does a decent job of portraying her struggle and frustration, especially when it involves other people, but the outcome, as I've already said before, is not entertaining nor conclusive.

At first, the film introduces Aura to all types of different circumstances: she meets a semi-famous couch surfing YouTube comedian who ends up staying with her and working at a new job. This is all very charming and complimented by unique dialogue that isn't quite witty but more on the cute side. Nevertheless, her interactions with her friends, family and even with the mysteriously modern white closet in her mother's apartment are intriguing. I found myself excited to witness how all of these new and old relationships will unfold themselves. However, as the film wears on, it becomes little more than Aura still not getting laid by that Nietzschean Cowboy, still flirting with the hot chef, still not really getting along with her family, and still neglecting her friends.

The little conflict that actually exists in the film arises from the friction between Aura and her mother. It's pretty dull until Aura finally snaps under the mild pressure and begins to scream at her mother about the same angsty shit that we all remember screaming at our mothers when we were 15 and wildly hormonal. Unfortunately, it's not the confrontation we've been waiting for and it's a huge letdown for the climax of a rather lifeless dull movie. Furthermore, the filming of this climactic moment is so obnoxiously distancing that I had trouble caring at all. The whole debacle is filmed from far away in one long shot so as to keep us from seeing Aura's facial expressions or that of her family. I don't know what the effect of this was supposed to be, but it left me very frustrated because I didn't feeling anything for this girl whose life was so close to mine. The audience is made a fly on a very boring wall... and I just don't think it really worked.

In the same way that Aura neglects her best college friend by admitting that she can't move in with her anymore only a few days in advance, Lena Dunham neglects the script. The whole story falls through like an unsigned lease. Without the story and dialogue to back it up, what the hell is the point in making a film like this?