Movie_Muse_Reviews The saga of the Millennial college graduate who moves back home and begins a maddening search for direction — that's what Lena Dunham sets off to depict in "Tiny Furniture" and she does it in the most Millennial way possible: completely DIY including casting her mother and sister to play — her mother and sister.Dunham captures the mundanity of post-undergrad life at home, even though her character Aura's life is a little more unusual; home is a Manhattan loft where mom (Laurie Simmons) is an a photographer/visual artist (she actually is in real life) of solid notoriety. Sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) lives there too, but she's in the no-pressure zone of high school. There isn't so much a plot synopsis as a list of friends new and old and other influences who make Aura's new life as a young adult and dreams of becoming a successful artist complicated and messy.The authenticity of Dunham's voice as a writer rings clear. A lot of it is the semi- autobiographical form; it's impossible for any peers watching (and maybe some a little older) not to relate in some way to Aura's "struggle." It might be nice if more stuff happened in the film instead of a whole lot of stuff that could be stuff but doesn't ever become stuff, but there's also something refreshing about taking it in as a contemporary portrait of an emerging generation. Also, you could argue that there's a certain poetic truth to the fact that nothing really happens.The "action" is how Aura navigates internal and external pressures. Everyone around her, for example, seems to have found a measure of success. Her mother, for one, has been successful forever; she meets a successful-ish YouTube star in Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who's talking to networks about a TV show and even her sister was recognized nationally for her poetry, which Aura can't help but demean. Then there's her oldest childhood friend, Charlotte (Jemima Kirke, Dunham's actually oldest childhood friend) who sports the couldn't-care-less attitude that plays in contrast to it all.Aura's first foray into the "real world" involves getting a job, since that's what people are supposed to do, but of course being a daytime closed-hours hostess at a restaurant is a far cry from her aspirations, even though she seems to believe its in her best interest. Throughout the course of the film, Dunham exposes a bit more of Aura's psychology, namely the complex nature of her relationship to her family and home in the specific and broadest sense. Done for as low a budget as possible, the actors here are all amateurs but it doesn't show. Dunham's strength is obviously her writing, but she's a sufficient stand in for the average 22-year-old, and as a director, she makes the most of it with some interesting shot framing to bring varying perspectives to the talk-heavy action."Tiny Furniture" is a really impressive debut for a fledgling filmmaker, especially one whose talent is writing and simply needed to round up a cast and crew to realize her story into some kind of finished product. It could certainly use a plot, but Dunham is able to effectively touch on the melange of post-college emotions in the 21st century in a way that's yet to be articulated, and which she effectively continued to expound upon in her HBO series "Girls," which this movie made possible. Dunham recognizes the complexity of her generation. There is a self-centered component, there's a familial dependency, but there's also a mixed bag of influences and life philosophies that can take hold of the wheel at any moment. We are pitiable and pitiful, lost yet driven, naive and all too aware of how the world works.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

Steve Pulaski The characters in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture are the kind that mistake the phrase "eight grade crying" for "integrated grinding," used in the context of describing a local dance. They are the kind of people who seem to have quite a bit to be thankful for - very nice homes/apartments, possessions that make people envious, lovely outfits, and more - but scarcely seem to recognize that and just go ahead and direct their attention to the first problem on their mind; one in particular is quoted that another spends a day "watching Rachel Maddow, eating coconut-macaroons and laying on a heating pad." They are also the kind of people who hit their friend with a wooden spoon in what seems to be a playful manner when they are legitimately angry at that same person. These are likely some of the most eclectic people ever committed to film.But Dunham commits them and drags them along in a tired and often boring array of archetypal, indie-situational comedy that never seems to be interesting enough to become invested in or relatable or believable enough to take seriously on a personal level. I almost feel that the people who look up to this film now - post-college kids and twentysomethings trying to latch on to a specific direction in life - will look back on this film in maybe twenty years and smirk and perhaps hide their face at the characters' naivete and almost disturbingly ungrateful attitude.The film is centered around Aura (Lena Dunham), who returns home from her liberal arts college to her mother's loft, which serves as her studio for her art. Aura majored in film studies and has no particular direction in life, and is caught in the middle of two men while trying to find motivation to even get up in the morning. The two men are pretty basic caricatures, much like herself - Jed (Alex Karpovsky), who has achieved moderate internet fame thanks to his Youtube videos and Keith (David Call), who works at the same restaurant Aura does.Right off the bat, these characters seem to be nothing more than vessels spewing cute phrases that are a cross between directionless collegiate talk and a product of screen writing quirkiness. Despite Dunham approaching this topic with the mindset to capture this point in people's lives with a sense of authenticity. But just like that, everybody here feels inauthentic and quirky to the point of being barely able to function. Everything, from their moments to their speech to their speech-patterns, seems to be meticulously laid out and almost robotic, so as nothing is natural and almost exists as this artificial dream world.Consider the scene where Aura and Jed have sex in a thin, tight metal pipe in the middle of the street in what is one of the most awkward and damning scenes I've seen in a while. There's no particular wit or humor in a scene like this. It's only awkward and serves as yet another moment when Dunham seems to be concocting a long line of eccentric events in the film for the sole purpose of having eccentric events take place.Then there are scenes like the one where Aura throws an all out temper-tantrum at her mother in a scene that is nothing but whiny in tone and only adds to the unlikability of its characters. This scene, however, is still a bold act on Dunham's behalf because she's unafraid to show her characters in two separate lights, or even make a stern note of the distasteful acts she commits. Yet by the time we start seeing this unlikable side to the characters, Tiny Furniture hasn't given us much to really like or appreciate about the characters, so by the time these aspects are introduced there's nothing for us to remind ourselves that these characters are somewhat decent people.I suppose by definition of technicalities, Tiny Furniture is considered a mumblecore film, for it has a heavy focus/attachment to its characters, makes an attempt at naturalistic dialog (by Dunham's definition not mine), and rather low-budget production values that use color as a way of disguising their cheapness. Dunham and another mumblecore filmmaker I have a great fondness for, Joe Swanberg, seem to do a lot of similar things from infusing their films with the likes of uniquely characters to focusing sights on their sexual adventures; the difficulty is stating why one does it better than the other. Maybe it's because Swanberg's approach seems to be catering to a wider demographic where you don't need to be a part of the characters' specific group in order to like or understand them. In Tiny Furniture, it seems the only way to have any kind of positive feeling towards these characters is if you have similar circumstances to them and, with the way Dunham has drawn these vapid and often contemptible people, I doubt a great many people have.Certain parts of Tiny Furniture work - the framing is top-notch and tightly-formatted, giving the sense we know exactly what Dunham wants to include and exclude in the shot and, on occasion, Dunham stages some strong monologues. Regardless of how I feel about Tiny Furniture, there's little denying that Lena Dunham will be a central figure to monitor with the popularity of indie film along with her HBO show Girls. Like it or not, Dunham has now been billed as "a voice of her generation" so much now that she (a) knows it and (b) will continue to produce films that stay true to her specific style. How you'll feel about this statement will differ. I just believe I'm stating a fact.Starring: Lena Dunham, Alex Karpovsky, and David Call. Directed by: Lena Dunham.

lweinbe1 I enjoyed this film so much that I felt compelled to make an IMDb account just to review it. I am quite surprised to find that so many reviewers found this film cliché, or described the main character as narcissistic and naive. I thought this film was incredibly sophisticated. While at face-value the plot is minimal, the subtext is incredibly compelling. Lena Dunham's character is trying to find her place in a society that is incredibly superficial, lonely, and depraved. When she turns to her sister and mother for compassion and tenderness she finds much to be desired, and this is what encourages her to seek validation in all of the wrong places. She is by no means naive and it would be simplistic to describe her character as lazy or narcissistic. For me, this film serves as a magnificent cross-section of what young adult life is like today: the alienation one experiences, the deep desire to find one's niche when there are so few open doors and so few means of finding genuine human connection. This film was a challenging and absolutely beautiful exploration of female belonging.

alan-lohf I was influenced to watch this film by the score it achieved on IMDb - 6.3 when I checked. I'm obliged to assume this was a misprint - presumably it should have been 0.3.The alarm bells started to ring with the credits - someone named Lena Dunham topped the cast and also wrote and directed this effort. Apparently she was 24 years old at the time. Okay, Mozart wrote his first symphony at the age of eight - but this is no symphony, it isn't even elevator music.The lead character is a young female, single, a little overweight (which I mention because she emphasizes it in the film), recently graduated and unemployed, living in New York with her mother and younger sister.What passes for a plot includes every imaginable cliché that might reasonably be crammed into 98 minutes:- inter-generational conflict, sibling rivalry, the search for affection, meaningless sex, blah, blah, blah. I imagine this film is at least partly autobiographical. Unfortunately, to describe it as tiresome is to indulge in gross understatement.The most positive thing I can say about this film is that the performances were, by and large, credible.Why the high scores on IMDb? Beats me! All I can say is, do yourself a big favour and watch something on television instead - anything!