Tiny Furniture Trailer from Lena Dunham on Vimeo.
I have been obsessed to the point of no return for one year or so with Tiny Furniture. A friend shared the trailer with me from last years South By Southwest where it was premiered. One year later it is now available on IFC on-demand for a small $6.99 and in select theaters. I bought it on-demand first and got my 48 hours out of my $6.99 by watching it twice of course.
The movie follows the protagonist Aura (Luara Dunham), a 22 year old recent Oberlin graduate as she navigates her way into the first stage of adult hood.
Like 90% of all American graduates, she moves home. She comes baring her pet hamster which will later symbolize the end of one chapter of her life, and the beginning of another.
Home for her is a little different then most typical American kids though, she resides in a minimalist Tribeca loft with her real life sister and real life mother who is also artist Laurie Simmons. Her father is also a famous painter but absent from the film.
Aura arrives home from college after being dumped at Burning Man Festival by her college boyfriend who went to "build a shrine to his ancestors out of a dying tree." She is confronted with reality as she sees her uber successful mother and over achieving sister bonding over one of her mother's photography sets as her sister models shoes with the tiny furniture surrounding them.
Aura like many liberal arts creatives has a useless degree in writing and film making and her resume is padded with youtube videos and shorts. Although I find it hard to believe a daughter of two famous artist will have trouble finding work; she first ventures into being a day hostess at a restaurant (that doesn't serve lunch) where she lusts over an unavailable sous chef. He wants her, but in all the wrong ways.
At the same time she reconnects with old city friends (actually life long socialite) from childhood who also have famous artist parents and and introduces her to ""this boy Chad. He is little bit famous, in like an internet kind of way." Who basically uses her for a place to crash as he tries to promote his own youtube channel in New York.
She struggles to make money, and have healthy relationship in this post-graduate delirium state.
When her mother is gone for a week, 10 bottles of wine go "missing" and all the "frozen entrees" are eaten. Her mother disproves of the boy she found to take home and struggles with intimacy issues of their mother daughter relationship.
When her sister throws a party when her mother is out one night, Aura is fed up with too many teenagers in their house, unsupervised and drinking so she decides to walk around the loft with no pants on with her "self entitled best friend." Creating a scene that shows Aura's vulnerable side and performance art aspect. The New York Times say that, "Ms. Dunham, as body-based artists sometimes do, bares her all, soft bulges and blemishes included. This, she seems to say whenever she points the camera at herself, is me, a very real, very human body coming into being. "
Aura's sister has some great qualities that are not a far stretch from her actual person. She indeed won a national high school poetry award, and shows the new generation of hipster, self-entitlement New York City scene youth. Her thick rimmed glasses and quirky snipes at her sister make their dialogue endless for quotes. For some reason the fight at the beginning when Aura needs a light bulb for her room sticks in my head. Her sister playing the tough but mono-tone bully asking Aura "Do you really want to start this!? I mean do you REALLY want to start this, because there are like a million things I could say right now....like go get a fucking light bulb!" This sibling bickering is classic throughout the whole film showing the relationship differences with each other and with their mother.
I can't stress enough about how awesome and independent this movie is. Every post graduate male or female should see this coming of age tale. It touches aspects between reality, film, and performance. To some it may seem like a leaky faucet dripping away scene by scene, but for me, each scene was a delicious bite into something fresh and sweet for our generations view on post-graduate life, finding who you are and what you are going to be.
