tiny furniture

As promised, here's my review for Tiny Furniture, who's run at St Anthony begins today.  But first, some showtimes:

Tiny Furniture (NR) runtime 1 hr 38 mins

Fri: (1:55), (4:30), 7:20, 9:40 Sat: 7:20, 9:40 Sun: (1:55), (4:30), 7:20, 9:40 Mon - Thu: (4:30), 7:20, 9:40

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While watching Tiny Furniture, I couldn’t help but feel that this movie was made for me (or at least the girl version of me): recent graduate from a mid-western liberal-arts college moves home and struggles to take life’s next step, whatever that might be.  That uncertainty makes life tough for our main character, Aura (Lena Dunham, also the film’s writer and director).  

She’s having a hard time.  She lets you know all the time.  Every argument with her mom or sister either starts or ends with her saying so.  For you readers, that might make the main character sound whiny.  That’s probably the whole idea, and the main joke driving the film.  Aura comes off like some modern Woody Allen, living out the great recession’s effect on our country’s youngest workforce.  

Despite my ability to relate to Aura’s situation, I struggle to go along with the joke.  It’s not that I don’t buy the character or her struggles, it’s more that I don’t buy the ironic viewpoint the movie seems to take with our heroine.  Every hardship that befalls her, every cold shoulder she elicits, no one comes to the aid of our distressed Aura.  The movie itself is against her: the camera’s stagnant throughout the picture; her environment (her home in particular) is cold and unreceptive to her sorrows.  I see all of this as a microcosm for the indifference shown to twentysomethings by the world.

None of this should really be a surprise to me.  But I find the nature in which it portrays Aura to be overly aggressive.  Oftentimes, Aura fluctuates from feelings of content to berating her family in little to no time at all.  Those switches are jolting, demonstrating Aura’s flippancy; all of this servers as a constant warning not to take her too seriously. The effect is a movie elbowing us throughout the film: “Look at this pathetic chick!  She has everything and she’s still not happy.”  I’ve come across this attitude before, usually while listening to interviews on NPR with fiftysomething businessmen on a book tour, saying something along the lines of:

Today’s youth are ungrateful, expecting awards around every corner.  The whole lot were coddled from day one.  They demand everything and deserve nothing.

I find Aura to be likeable if only because her world is filled with even bigger assholes.  But I fear Dunham might have been too weary about the portrayal coming off as self-absorbed, maybe conceited or who knows what else (None of this really is for me to say).  Whatever the case may be, she puts as much distance between Aura and the film as possible in an attempt to keep us from sympathizing with her too much: giving the set no warmth but plenty of sterility, the camera very little movement, and letting Aura just stew in her own pity for comedic effect (no matter how subdued that effect might be).  The film judges too much, and gives the audience little chance to decide for themselves how to view our character.  I don’t want to laugh Aura, so much as I want to let her be.

Other notes worth mentioning:

•The name Aura seems like an odd one.  I tried to find other instances of it in pop culture, but the closest I could come up with is Aurora in Sleeping Beauty.  Let’s assume the similiarity is intentional (if only because it makes for an enjoyable reading).  Should we think that all it takes to wake Aura from this funk is a kiss from Prince Charming?  Or in the year 2010/2011, a romp in the abandoned lot with an ex-coworker?  Ok, probably not.  But if Aura is in a sleep-like state, it might explain the alarm clock buzzing ominously at the end of the movie.  It’s like each beep is a reminder that no one’s going to wake her up but herself.  Ok, that’s a little cheesy.  And probably why I didn’t put it in the main review.

•I like to think of Aura and Charlotte’s relationship as an homage to Alice and Charlotte’s in Last Days of Disco.  I doubt that’s the case (but Dunham does use the same name- that can’t be a coincidence, can it?).  It is interesting to see two sets of comical, privileged characters be both the cause and solutions to each other’s problems while coming of age in uncertain economic times in New York City.  I mean, come on here, look at those similarities (did I mention that both films contains characters named Charlotte?).

•I just found out that Dunham shot the whole film on a Canon 7D, the same camera I own. The similarities don't end.