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By Brian Lafferty
December 11, 2010 (San Diego)--While watching Tiny Furniture, which opened yesterday at the Ken Cinema, I was somewhat captivated and never bored. It accomplishes its goals and captures without fail the feeling it wants to convey.
It is competently made and director Lena Dunham shows a knack for visually pleasing composition. I enjoyed one shot in a hallway. In the middle of the frame is a wall sandwiched between two entryways into the sisters’ room. On the right we glimpse the main character, Aura (writer/director Dunham, who injects a childlike air into her performance) and on the left is her sister Nadine (Dunham’s real-life sister Grace Dunham), both faintly seen.
There are lots of expertly composed shots like that throughout the film. This is quite an accomplishment considering Dunham was limited in both her budget and shooting locations; much of the film was shot at her parents’ house (her mother has a major role in this film).
The movie centers on Aura, who just graduated from college with a degree in film theory. She has a rather embarrassing video of herself on Youtube, which has gotten upwards of four hundred views. She gets a job at a restaurant taking reservations, but she's late a few times for work and it doesn’t pay well. She strikes up a friendship with a famous Youtube comedian whose forte is reading the works of Frederick Nietzsche while mounted upon a toy pony. She argues with her mother and her sister over various things.
Tiny Furniture is an accurate encapsulation of the feeling of life after college, the time when you need to get a job and when you’re in a rut. Watching it reminded me of my first six months after graduating from California State University, Fullerton. During that time I was in the biggest rut of my life, a time when I believed I would never be able to pull myself out. The movie’s story is appropriately disorganized, eventually coming together as Aura begins to piece her life back together.
In film school I was taught that white walls, particularly those without anything on them, are a student film stereotype. Here Dunham makes them an asset. The house, where much of the film is set, contains some of the whitest walls I’ve seen in a movie. All the cabinets are white. This makes things interesting when Aura needs a light bulb and is told to look in the white cabinet. The walls, which are sparsely decorated with paintings, give the movie an overly sterile feel. This makes her life all the more stifling, especially when we see her more colorful workplace, which contains hues of brown, orange, and red.
Did I like it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Yes, it's a good film, but don't expect too much. It is one of the better independent films I’ve seen this year of the purely homemade variety. I do think Dunham is a talented filmmaker and I believe she can do very well with a bigger budget and more resources. Tiny Furniture isn’t a masterpiece but it is adequate and well-produced. It does give a sense that Dunham has better things in store for us in the future.
I can say that I look forward to seeing Dunham’s next movie.
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