Tiny Furniture Review- by Michael Carlisle

Title: Tiny Furniture
Year: 2010
Director: Lena Dunham
Country: U.S
Language: English

 Newcomer Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture is a unique film about the difficulty of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, the adolescent life crisis. The period in which you know what you want but aren’t sure how to get it. The period in which you are expected  to act like an adult and take on the responsibilities of an adult but aren’t recognized or respected as an adult. You cannot go back, you aren’t sure how to proceed. You feel stuck. Aura feels stuck and she is incredibly frustrated about this.

Aura (Lena Dunham) is a frustrated young adult who has just graduated a college in Ohio. She has no boyfriend and no job. She has nothing to show for her education other than a humiliating YouTube video. She is discontent about living at home but has no money to move elsewhere so she lives with her mother, an artist who makes a living by photographing tiny furniture, and her younger sister who is a thinner and taller version of her sister.

“The film seems deliberately motionless” says famed  film critic Roger Ebert. Indeed this is true. Aura wants to have a good job, however she finds herself taking reservations at a restaurant. Aura wants to have a good boyfriend, but the pickings are slim and nobody seems like a good choice. Aura wants to have a good relationship with her mother, but the generation gap distances them as well as her mother’s distracted artistic nature. There is no plot because that’s the point of the film, it’s plotless because Aura’s life is plotless. It is unfortunately either going nowhere or in a pointless loop,

A criticism of this film is that Aura is too whiny and passive aggressive, her character is not very likeable. This is also another point the film is trying to make. Aura  wishes to become a responsible adult but she still has very childlike attitudes and behaviors that she needs to rid. She also doesn’t know how to become a responsible adult, therefore all her attempts at being “responsible” (like attempting to end her sister’s very mellow party because of underage drinking” come off as goofy and idiotic. Her childlike attitudes are combined with her frustration of transitioning, of course she is not going to have a likeable attitude! I choose to sympathize with her, because I know how it feels to know what I want but not know how to get it. She is desperately trying to get on with her life but does not know how to and perhaps her society plays a role in her inability to move forward

Gore Vidal once said “I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.” Well I think Vidal would’ve considered missing out on the sex scene in Tiny Furniture. It’s not an incredibly hot nor is it a disgusting sex scene, it’s just a very symbolic desperate sex scene that takes place in a construction site. The sex scene is symbolic because it shows Aura’s and society’s childlike attitude, we want instant gratification. We do not wish to  wait for sex or for the right person to come along, we want it when we have the desire. This is also an insight to adolescent frustration, we want the world but we want it on our own terms. We dislike waiting for the perfect job opportunity, we dislike being in limbo. We want control and Aura feels that if she can’t control where she goes in life, she can at least control when she has sex.

In conclusion, Lena Dunham’s low budgeted, semi -autobiographical film Tiny Furniture is a well constructed film about the nature of today’s adolescent life crisis and our want for instant gratification. It may not be as entertaining as similar films like The Graduate but I believe it holds more truths about life and is much more relevant in understanding the North American society of  the 21^st Century. There is much to learn and much to be understood from this film and therefore I would claim this to be one of the greatest film of this decade. I look forward to anything else Luna Dunham will make in the future. Praise it! 5/5