Winning the Best Narrative Feature prize at the SXSW Film Festival and being called “the next Woody Allen” must be heady stuff indeed for young filmmaker Lena Dunham. In Tiny Furniture, she takes aspects of her life, puts a fictional spin on it, and then films it with friends and family in major roles. Like Allen’s early work, it’s very talky, and it’s not especially cinematic. But there is a feeling of realness to the piece even though many of the people aren’t particularly interesting and what they do doesn’t really strike much of a responsive chord. Younger people, however, may find more to identify with here in their own generational understanding than someone whose life and career is well along the way.
Tiny Furniture (Blu-ray)
Directed by Lena Dunham
Studio: Criterion
Year: 2010
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 99 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English
Subtitles: SDH
Region: A
MSRP: $ 39.95
Release Date: February 14, 2012
Review Date: February 10, 2012
The Film
3/5
Having just graduated from college with a film studies degree, Aura (Lena Dunham) comes home to New York to live with her artistic photographer mother Siri (Laurie Simmons) and her academically gifted sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) while she decides what to do with her life. At a party she’s introduced to Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who, like her, has an internet following with YouTube videos, and while her mother and sister are out of town for a week visiting potential colleges, she invites Jed to stay with her, an arrangement which the freeloading videographer quickly takes advantage of. Aura begins working as a daytime hostess at a neighborhood restaurant where she meets the handsome sous chef Keith (David Call) who’s too preoccupied with a tottering relationship to notice her. Even an old friend from her younger years Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) reconnects with her once she’s back in town, but as in all of her peer relationships, Aura seems more the giver than the taker, a situation she’s getting pretty fed up with.
While there is some wit and fun in Dunham’s verbose script (there’s a cute running gag with “white cabinets” that works a couple of times, and responses to her YouTube video are laugh out loud funny in a mean sort of way), there’s also a great deal of yammering on and on, perhaps symbolizing the eternal futile quest for self-fulfillment that seems eons away for most of the younger people in this movie. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of drive or ambition pushing these young people, as if that great career is supposed to instantly materialize in front of them that they can simply snap up. Friendships and relationships also seem to be tentative and almost not worth the effort for these folks (the film’s one sex scene is graphically staged and shot inside a drain pipe but doesn’t really have the resonance that the director obviously wanted it to have). There’s a ragged subplot about Aura’s plans on getting an apartment with college friend Frankie (Merritt Wever) that for some weird reason take a nosedive, and not only does the writer-director not develop it (or the reasons Aura has for not wanting to go forward with it), she stages a couple of supremely awkward scenes about it that add running time to the movie but really accomplish nothing.
Writing and directing a film are difficult enough tasks, but Lena Dunham has tripled her problems by also starring in her own film. She has a semi-deadpan acting style that works for the disaffected Aura, but she’s not a special enough character around which to base a movie. She does have one screaming quarrel with her mother that shoots like a bolt of lightning through an otherwise laidback movie, but even there it feels too overwritten like all of the film’s dialogue. Laurie Simmons, Lena’s real-life mother, plays her part quite naturally and has an especially effective moment with her daughter in the film’s final moments. The two guys in her life played excellently by Alex Karpovsky and David Call come across as the jerks they are while Jemima Kirke also rings true as the quirky former friend trying to reestablish connections that are pretty much a thing of the past.
Video Quality
3.5/5
Shot digitally, the transfer has been framed at 2.35:1 and is presented with 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Color is very consistently maintained in the transfer, and flesh tones are very natural at all times. Sharpness, however, is not always consistently applied. The focus puller seems slow on the uptake on occasion, and some sequences like the sex scene in the pipe are not very well lensed. Black levels are average, and shadow detail is sometimes rather murky. The film has been divided into 18 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix contains very little ambiance suggesting its New York City filming locations. Teddy Blanks’ music gets a little play in the rear channels, but it much more a stereo spread than a full-featured surround encode. Apart from the music, the rear channels are virtually silent for much of the running time. The dialogue, however, has been well recorded and considering its importance to the film, that’s a good thing indeed. It’s been placed firmly in the center channel.
Special Features
4/5
A conversation between filmmakers Nora Ephron and Lena Dunham delves into the autobiographical nature of their work, their mutual respect for the work of Woody Allen, and the $45,000 budget for the movie. This interview runs 30 ½ minutes and is in 1080p.
Writer-director Paul Schrader discusses the film as a cult success and an example of the “mumblecore” film school in a 7 ¾-minute video essay which is presented in 1080p.
Lena Dunham’s first feature Creative Nonfiction is included as a bonus. The story concerns a college student working on a screenplay (which plays out in isolated segments throughout the film) and engaging in two frustrating sexual experiences with boys she’s attracted to. It runs 58 ½ minutes in 1080i. An introduction by Lena Dunham talks about some of her short films as well as the genesis of this movie, and it runs for 8 ¼ minutes in 1080p.
Four of Lena Dunham’s short films are presented in 1080i. They are “Pressure” (4 minutes), “Open the Door” (5 minutes), “Hooker on Campus” (4 ¾ minutes), and “The Fountain” (6 minutes), the latter short finding its way in bits and pieces into the movie Tiny Furniture.
The film’s theatrical trailer runs for 2 ½ minutes in 1080p.
Included is a folded pamphlet containing the cast and crew list, one color film still, and an essay on the director's film work thus far by author Phillip Lopate.
The Criterion Blu-rays include a maneuvering tool called “Timeline” which can be pulled up from the menu or by pushing the red button on the remote. It shows you your progress on the disc and the title of the chapter you’re now in. Additionally, two other buttons on the remote can place or remove bookmarks if you decide to stop viewing before reaching the end of the film or want to mark specific places for later reference.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Talky but not entirely unsatisfying, Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture suggests a potentially dry and witty filmmaker at its core with more experiences to draw upon for her future projects. The Criterion disc offers some excellent bonus materials for fans of the writer-director.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
