Criterion Collection: Tiny Furniture

When Lena Dunham's "Tiny Furniture" debuted in 2010, it became somewhat of a critical darling with near unanimous praise from mainstream outlets. Heck, Dunham even won an Independent Spirit Award for its screenplay. While the film is an interesting, if somewhat slight, indie--it probably plays to a more niche market than the critics would have you suspect. In that way, it seems an ideal choice for a boutique Criterion presentation. Dunham's work (she is its writer, director, and star) and characters ably showcase a combination of post-collegiate ennui and over-educated (and pseudo-intellectual) entitlement. Set in a fashionable New York City young, artistic and urban environment--the film's sardonic tone and cultural critique was sometimes reminiscent (to me) of the works of Whit Stillman (Metropolitan) but with an edgier and more modernized vibe. But the quirky story, which can be quite funny, also achieves a quiet poignancy when you least expect it. I suspect that, in many ways, "Tiny Furniture" will be fairly divisive when discovered by a wider audience. While I do think many will embrace its plentiful charms, I think it will have just as many detractors who might not connect with its core characters.

Dunham plays a recent film school graduate who returns home to live with her mother and sister in New York. Reeling with uncertainty, she has no idea what to do with her life. She reconnects with old friends, take a entry level job, spars with her sister and generally just goes with the flow with a rather apathetic view toward the future. Some of the film's funniest moments are provided by the almost elitist and superior set of friends that Dunham weaves throughout the picture. Kids who have more confidence and entitlement than ambition or talent. This is a world where YouTube has become a proving ground of celebrity, where reading a book is the height of intellectual status. It is a subtle skewering of a generation yet to find a purpose. But although I really enjoyed some of the offbeat humor in these sequences, it is rather stylized and probably not for every taste. The segments of home life are just as interesting, and the final quiet moment between daughter and mother is, perhaps, the film's strongest and most memorable scene.

"Tiny Furniture" is, in no way, a plot-driven piece. If you need a big story, this won't please you. This is a character driven indie that creates a mood and allows its characters to grow and shift in slight, but significant, ways. Dunham, as a writer, has a very specific voice. As an actress, she is unafraid to showcase (and expose) a very personal, and oftentimes unpleasant, side to her persona. And yet, she remains eminently identifiable. I also really liked Laurie Simmons, as her mother, who provides quite a few laughs throughout but whose complexities provide a lot of the film's shadings. While "Tiny Furniture" is not perfect, I really liked its sensibilities which were simultaneously absurd AND real providing for a winning combination.

The Criterion release is a real showcase for Dunham. Her 2009 hour-long feature "Creative Nonfiction" is included in its entirety. Sharing some of the same themes as "Tiny Furniture," the film looks and feels a bit more amateurish but highlights Dunham's deadpan comedic timing and is surprisingly funny and engaging. The presentation also includes four short films by Dunham, an interview with writer/director Paul Schrader, and Nora Ephron's interview with Dunham. Even though "Tiny Furniture" is a micro-budget indie, Dunham already has Hollywood heavyweights Schrader and Ephron acknowledging her work. I say that bodes well for this promising filmmaker, and I look forward to what others stories she has to tell. KGHarris, 12/11.

I FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE NOT SEEN THE CRITERION BLU RAY. THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE MOVIE ITSELF. I PUT IT OUT HERE, BECAUSE I THINK SO FEW PEOPLE HAVE HEARD OF IT OR KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT. TO THOSE WHO THINK WRITING A REVIEW FOR A PRODUCT THAT ISN'T OUT YET IS "BAD"...I APOLOGIZE.

Aura has just finished college in Ohio. Her major is Film Theory. Her boyfriend of 3 years has broken up with her, however. With no job prospects and no love life, she returns to the NYC home of her mother and her gifted younger sister Nadine. She spends a lot of time moping and she half-heartedly restarts a friendship with the far perkier, but clearly spoiled and selfish Charlotte. She takes a low paying job as a day hostess. She half-heartedly dates a Youtube star she meets at a party and she half-heartedly flirts with a good-looking but attached chef at her restaurant.

Aura is utterly aimless...and it is her aimlessness that is the focus of director/writer/star Lena Dunham's TINY FURNITURE. It's a very low-budget film that depicts lots of listless young people doing a lot of whining, navel-gazing and engaging in sharp-edged banter. The movie shows us a very tiny little particular sub-culture of humanity (bored, over-educated, under-employed New York City residents with artistic pretensions). It feels very real and specific...yet the people we meet are extremely aggravating. Some will find them actively upsetting. I found most of them to be beneath getting worked up about...but just low-grade annoyances. And absolutely NOT people I'd want to spend time with.

Aura makes mistakes with both men...but neither of them was right for her anyway. She irritates the heck out of her successful artist mother and has a volatile relationship with her high achieving and oh-so superior teenage sister, who seems to have the drive her intelligent but aimless older sister lacks. She drives away one "good" friend and spends too much time with a "bad" friend.

As I write all this, I realize it makes the movie sound darn near unwatchable. This is not true. Dunham has crafted some very funny dialogue for her characters...and to her credit, the witty remarks actually sound like something these people might say. They are so full of disdain for the world around them, but clearly feel the lack of belonging to that world. The Youtube artist that Aura spends some time with has become "famous" because he's made a series of videos depicting himself riding on a rocking horse while reciting Nietzsche. This has gotten him an agent and some appointments with producers in NYC. Yet it's also earned him no money, and he's essentially homeless in the city while making his rounds. Aura has a degree in film theory, a very passive degree indeed. Not in film production...theory. God forbid she should actually MAKE something. These modest plot turns and observations make TINY FURNITURE some fun to watch.

Dunham does an amusing job playing a character that I sincerely hope is not much like her. She has no shame as an actress...she spends much of the movie lying around her house in a shirt and panties, with her hair unkempt. She just can't make an effort to be presentable...even when she goes out, she appears to deliberately wear unflattering clothing. She has cast her real-life mother as her movie mother and her real life sister as her movie sister. Both performers are okay, but nothing great. But it's amusing see the physical similarities and differences.

TINY FURNITURE is a tiny film (reported budget is $45,000). While only 98 minutes long, it drags in places. Nothing much happens, and next to nothing is resolved. But it's got some wit and a good control of tone. I'm certainly impressed enough to at least be interested in seeing what Dunham does next. This is not a movie for everyone. If you shy away from "indie" or "quirky"...stay far away. But if you're always looking for something new(ish) and offbeat, I think you'll find at least a few satisfying nuggets here.

'm in a very weird place when it comes to how I feel about Lena Dunham's debut film, Tiny Furniture. On the one hand, I respect here accomplishment -- taking the standard coming of age film and subverting our expectations, de-romanticizing youth and offering an unsentimental look at a young woman's immediate post-college days at her mother's loft in Manhattan. On the other hand, I find myself disliking much of the cast, wallowing as they do in self-obsessed passive agressive narcissism. But I suspect that's the point.

Dunham's characters exist in a bubble of Tribeca privilege -- they don't have problems with money, there are no social issues to speak of, and the greatest tragedy is the death of a pet hamster. They are quite literally the "Urban Liberal Elites" that the Republicans rail against. But beneath the veneer of privilege you find sad, miserable people who are very dissatisfied with their lives -- as if the lack of conflict and the very low stakes in which they exist leave them unmoored from life itself.

Aura, the film's protagonist, finds herself adrift in Manhattan -- college is over, and yet she doesn't know what to do next. She spends the summer pining for two men -- one, a "YouTube star" who has taken residence in her mother's loft but shows no romantic interest in Aura, and the second, Keith, a chef in the hip restaurant where Aura takes a job as a hostess. Both men abuse and take advantage of Aura in different ways, but the end result of both relationships is Aura blaming herself for their selfishness.

Meanwhile, Aura deals with the dysfunctional relationships she has with her mother, a famous artist, and her genius sister, who wins a major poetry award without trying. An old friend from high school, Charlotte (who may or may not be British, but has a British accent), provides Aura with companionship and bad advice, and another friend, Frankie, a new friend from college, is seen mostly from afar via telephone calls. But the two operate as counterpoints to one another -- one, an affluent young woman who lives a life of leisure and wants for nothing, and the other, a driven middle class girl with career ambitions -- and represent the two choices Aura has. The friend she sides with isn't particularly surprising, but it does help underscore the point of Tiny Furniture.

That ultimately, life is ugly and unsentimental -- that people make bad decisions and live to regret them. And despite their desire to fix things, they keep making the wrong choices. I may not have enjoyed Tiny Furniture as much as the marketing suggested I would, but I did appreciate its honesty and integrity -- both in its unflinching portrayal of the life of a young woman and its refusal to bow to Hollywood standards for coming of age stories. In Tiny Furniture, people don't come of age, they just get older. And the ticking clock of time provides no pat closure or life lessons, only the knowledge that old age is coming, and even if you manage to get things together, you may still fail to find happiness and understanding. But you may learn to live with it.

Although the film was meant to evoke Woody Allen or the early work of Nora Ephron, I'm also reminded of similar films of unsentimental youth, including an obscure indie film featuring Lauren Ambrose called Swimming, the claustrophobic personal films of John Cassavetes, and the starkly cynical 1970's BBS films, especially Five Easy Pieces.

The film was shot on HD originally, and Criterion provides a flawless transfer. Despite the pristine, yet cold cinematography, I found the film to lack the artificiality of other films shot straight to a digital format. Mostly this is due to unvarnished bodies of the actors, who look and act like real people, zits and all.

The extras include four of Dunham's short films, her first full-length feature, Creative Nonfiction (which is only an hour), an interview with Dunham conducted by Nora Ephron, and a rousing defense of Tiny Furniture by legendary writer and filmmaker Paul Schrader, who quite surprisingly is well-versed in the mumblecore genre where Tiny Furniture ultimately has its roots, as well as the criticisms leveled against both Dunham and the film. This edition continues Criterion's excellent documentation of the work of young independent female directors that began with the excellent British film, The Fish Tank.

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