"Dunham has created something magical."
Have you ever seen a movie that seemed to be based on your own life? A movie so eerily similar in texture and tone that the filmmaker had to have known everything about you, known the town you grew up in, and made it all into a sweeping cinematic portrait? At best, most films only seem to touch upon truths here and there, a few moments that quietly remind you of things you had forgotten, or feelings you hadn't felt in years. Writer/actor/director Lena Dunham throws this model entirely out the window in her film Tiny Furniture, a film so modern and absolutely of-the-moment in its composition that Dunham could only be taking the story from the back pages of her own life, and as it turns out, she is.
The setting, though perhaps not the particulars, will be all too familiar to many of those who just graduated from college. Aura (Lena Dunham) comes home, with her useless film theory degree from her liberal arts school in Ohio (cough, cough, Oberlin) to New York. Her mother, Siri (Laurie Simmons), is a successful artist who shoots pictures of miniatures (hence the title); her sister, Nadine (Grace Dunham), is tall, accomplished, uniquely good-looking, and popular. Life has kept on going at their immaculately mid-century modern apartment while Aura has been away, friends and family moving forward without her input, and when she arrives back she is almost a stranger. Adrift and stunned from a breakup with her boyfriend, it's a struggle to find work, and she spends time reconnecting with her childhood best friend, the gorgeous Charlotte (Jemima Kirke). A few boys enter the picture, including a literary sous-chef as well as a freeloading YouTube star (Alex Karpovsky) who's in town to shop his TV pilot around to HBO and Comedy Central, but nobody who really seems to like her. Aura insists that she's trying her hardest, but at what, exactly?
The film excels in many areas, including the jokes, which are casual and hilarious, measured and moment-appropriate. New Yorkers will gag slightly over the TriBeCa chic setting, but it feels authentic, and the greater reason for this is that the film seems to be entirely autobiographical. Director Lena Dunham plays a version of herself, and cast her artistic mother as her artistic mother, her sister as her sister, and filmed in their real-life apartment. A momentary aside to laud the remarkable choice of Jemima Kirke, whose performance I so wholly enjoyed I was shocked to learn this was her first film. From the casually amazing oufits to the insane things she says, Kirke's portrayal of best friend Charlotte is part Courtney Love hysterics, partly a waifish British Joanna Newsom, and part my newfound spirit animal. She bursts onto the scene with a heavy slap to the face, and is entirely too fabulous. Rather intentionally, she steals every scene she's in, and makes off with the best lines in the film, including: "On my resume, under skills I put 'has a landline.'" And in one substance-addled moment, drops the little gem: "It's kind of like that book, The Giver, you know, where that kid stores everyone's emotions. [beat] No, it's not like that at all."
It seems entirely obvious to me that the reason the film feels so genuine is because it is created from the stuff of life. Details are noticed and replicated -- the little fights between siblings, the awkward conversations you have with people you work with, the way you say horrible things you immediately regret -- these are all stops along a well-traveled territory. Lena Dunham has directed her family in a movie about themselves, where they are playing themselves. This could be seen as taking self-documentation to an almost embarrassing level, but Dunham has done something more than navel-gaze. She has created an outstanding work that presents an entirely relatable version of one girl's post-grad delirium. Aura is living the sad life of so many people I know, and this is their story. The not-pretty smart girls who went to college, got their hearts broken by men they expected to marry, and lost many of the college friends they expected to be friends with forever. Aura is a little awkward and oscillates between trying to obtain control of situations in which she has no control and not caring at all, but ultimately she's fighting the same battle as everyone else, attempting to make deep and satisfying connections with the people around her.
Trying to have a life in a city when you have no money can feel deadly depressing, and the thought of working retail for pennies when you've already spent so much money on what has turned out to be an entirely useless degree is heartbreaking. Since the recession, no one can afford to live on their own and so everyone moves back in with their parents. Aura is a little too forward, a little too willing to over-share in that dark way that everyone who's had the Internet their whole life is. A few nebulous, undefined relationships with boys and a very minor pill dalliance round out the drifting. In one stunning moment Siri asks Charlotte if she feels the same stunning sense of entitlement as Aura, and Charlotte giggles then says, "Oh, believe me, mine is much worse."
Much more like an incredible short story than a tired-out trope of a film, Dunham has created something magical in 98 minutes flat. Though this is an indie film, it lacks the terrible quality that many independent films seem to tout. Artfully shot, and reminiscent at times of a Wes Anderson film (of course), there's plenty of style, smarts, and fun in Tiny Furniture.
Tiny Furniture opened in New York City on November 12 and in Los Angeles on November 26.
Grade: A
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