Tiny Furniture

That period following college graduation, when one returns to the nest, can last from a few months to a lifetime, and is difficult for all concerned. I know I went through it, and if I was anything like the character in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, I'd like to apologize to my family.

Dunham, who writes and directs, stars as Aura. She's fresh back from a film theory degree earned at a college in Ohio (Dunham went to Oberlin), nursing a broken heart, to move back in to her mother's vast apartment somewhere in lower Manhattan. Her mother is a celebrated and eccentric photographer, who mostly indulges Aura but occasionally gets mad (like when Aura's friends drink all her wine). Aura's younger sister, a high school prodigy (she wins a prize for poetry, despite having no respect for the art form), resents her big sister's return, especially having turned Aura's bedroom into her "special place."

Aura, describing her state as "post-grad delirium," is absolutely adrift. She gets a job as a hostess in a restaurant, and falls in cahoots with an old friend, Charlotte, a boozy rich kid who seems to have wandered in from Gossip Girl. She is attracted to two different men. One of them is, Jed, a video artist who has gotten some fame for posting clips to YouTube of himself as the "Nietschzian Cowboy," and another is the sous chef at the restaurant. She likes him even though he has a girlfriend and admits to fancying Japanese "tentacle rape" porn.

Overall I liked Tiny Furniture, mostly for the sparkling dialogue. The script is littered with bon mots, and it was lovely seeing a film populated with intelligent, witty people. I need to see it again just to jot down some of the lines, which come fast and heavy.

But Tiny Furniture does suffer from some first-filmitis. Dunham, in a move that may have been out of economic necessity but smacks of narcissistic nepotism, cast her own mother and sister in those roles (her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a photographer). Mostly this works okay, as neither woman is an accomplished performer, but they don't embarrass themselves, either. Simmons mostly has to express a combination of bemusement and annoyance with Dunham, which is probably true-to-life.

The film's greatest flaw becomes all-too apparent in the final third, when the charm of the lead character starts deflating like an air mattress one of the characters tries to sleep on. Her immaturity and self-absorption exasperated this viewer. I started to side with the mother, and was hoping she'd kick Aura out to the curb. I'm guessing that this is very close to autobiography, and Dunham attempted to avoid making herself look too wonderful and overcompensated, ending up with a portrait of a pampered, pretentious woman-child.

But I don't want to be too hard on this film. The writing glistens, and though the film is not visually interesting, Dunham directs with a nice touch. I should also add that if Dunham had attempted to make this film with Hollywood money, a condition would certainly have been that she not play the lead role. She is not, by Hollywood standards, beautiful (though by regular person standards, she's not unattractive). Throughout the film she shows herself off in underwear and, in one long shot, nude. It's as if Dunham were making a statement about how Hollywood has warped our view of women's bodies.

My grade for Tiny Furniture: B