Tiny Furniture
Directed by: Lena Dunham
Written by: Lena Dunham (screenplay)
Starring: Lena Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Grace Dunham and Laurie Simmons

Lena Dunham is an expert when it comes to enhancing lives that would normally be lived in miniature.  In her excellent feature debut, Tiny Furniture, Dunham magnifies the life of Aura, a recent college graduate who moves back home and seems stuck in neutral.  In addition to writing and directing this film, Lena also plays the title character and has her actual mother and sister star as fictional versions of her mother and sister.  Tiny Furniture is the definition of an independent film, and its formal sophistication and biting wit show up lesser attempts like Paranormal Activity.

Dunham landed a gig on HBO with the Judd Apatow-produced Girls in part because of Tiny Furniture.  The premise of that show is largely the same as this debut film on a larger scale.  Dunham plays a young woman struggling professionally, financially and sexually.  She does this quite well, reciting her own dialogue with an off-beat delivery that is a hybrid of a mumblecore character and actual human being.

Thankfully, Dunham also knows how to compose a shot as well as a sentence.  Though it’s clear that Tiny Furniture was made on a bare bones budget (some of the side characters are the wrong kind of awkward on camera), it is a very aesthetically pleasing film to look at.  This is mostly because the upper class New York lifestyle that Aura’s mother (Laurie Simmons) and sister (Grace Dunham) inhabit is posh to begin with.

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