{"id":1009,"date":"2010-06-12T12:18:12","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T17:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:25:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:25:50","slug":"tiny-furniture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/12\/tiny-furniture\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Furniture"},"content":{"rendered":"

A move toward the autobiographical has been one of the more interesting developments to surface in recent indie cinema. Azazel Jacobs\u2019s Momma Man<\/em><\/a> (2008) and Josh and Benny Safdie\u2019s Daddy Longlegs<\/em><\/a> (2010) can serve as reference points. Lena Dunham\u2019s Tiny Furniture<\/em> (2010), the second feature written and directed by the twenty-four-year-old filmmaker, represents the most recent example. It won the top prize at the SXSW Film Festival in March, is being distributed by IFC Films, and played at BAMcinemaFEST last night.<\/p>\n

On some level, all of these films deal with the filmmakers\u2019 relationships with their parents. Daddy Longlegs<\/em> is a fictional portrait of Josh and Benny Safdie\u2019s eccentric father, but it details their own conflicted feelings about their dad based on memories from their childhood. I saw the film for the third time at the Wisconsin Film Festival in April. I can tell you that Daddy Longlegs<\/em> gets better with each viewing, and this last time, it packed an even stronger emotional wallop due to Frey\u2019s response at the end.<\/p>\n

The other two films take the perspective of young adults, whose parents also happen to be well-known figures in the art world. Jacobs uses a surrogate actor, Matt Boren, in Momma\u2019s Man<\/em>, but he casts his own parents, Ken and Flo Jacobs, his real high school friend as Dante, and sets the film in the Tribeca loft in which he grew up. Jacobs later cuts in home-movie footage of himself as child, which makes the autobiographical aspect even more overt.<\/p>\n

Lena Dunham plays the protagonist, Aura, in Tiny Furniture<\/em>. The film is also shot in her family\u2019s Tribeca loft in NYC, features her artist mother Laurie Simmons as her fictional single mother, Siri, and her high school-aged sister Grace as her fictional sister, Nadine. Her actual father, the painter Carroll Dunham, is not included in this family portrait. Aura has just graduated from college in Ohio (Dunham went to Oberlin), and the film is about leaving the safety net of college and Aura\u2019s awkward attempt to navigate her life after graduation.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know the filmmaker personally \u2013 though I\u2019m familiar with her film reviews \u2013 but the autobiographical parts, like in Momma\u2019s Man<\/em> and Daddy Longlegs<\/em> manage to give the film additional layers of complexity. With semi-autobiographical work, a viewer is always conscious of how the filmmakers choose to portray themselves and their own family within a fictional world. Because the films are trying to blur the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction, those things that manage to be revealed \u2013 the unintentional slippages \u2013 actually turn out to be part of the work\u2019s fascination.<\/p>\n

Although Aura has all benefits of class privilege, she\u2019s depressed to be leaving college. She fears her that her film theory degree will turn out to be useless in finding meaningful employment. Aura makes self-deprecating videos that feature her in very unflattering poses, such as in a bikini bathing suit, causing online viewers to ridicule her with comments like \u201cwhales ahead\u201d and \u201cwhat a blubber factory!\u201d Upon returning home, she calls out, \u201cHoney, I\u2019m home . . . family?\u201d<\/p>\n

Aura doesn\u2019t quite get the warm reception she somehow anticipates. Her mom is too busy photographing Nadine amidst dollhouse furniture (hence, the film\u2019s title) for her art work. Aura questions why her mother has never photographed her. Siri claims that it\u2019s because Aura is never around, but Nadine suggests that it\u2019s because her legs are \u201clonger and more supple.\u201d In Aura\u2019s absence, Nadine has pre-empted her room. There\u2019s obvious sibling rivalry between them. Whereas Aura lacks self-confidence and is short and a bit on the pudgy side, Nadine, despite her age, is tall and slim and very self-assured.<\/p>\n

Aura complains that she\u2019s just broken up with her boyfriend, who has moved to Colorado. She gets very little sympathy. Nadine compares him to a \u201cspeck of Granola,\u201d while Siri tells her, \u201cYou know, I always said he was really a sweet guy, but like the perfect first boyfriend \u2013 like the way a college boyfriend should be.\u201d Her mother downplays her own twenties, thereby minimizing Aura\u2019s feelings as merely reflecting a stage of life. While looking for a light bulb, Aura finds and begins to read her mother\u2019s diary. Aura discovers intimate details about her mother\u2019s life at her age, which she casually shares with her friends.<\/p>\n

In Momma\u2019s Man<\/em>, Mikey\u2019s mom dotes on him, reinforcing the image of him as an adult baby. Aura in Tiny Furniture<\/em> is clingy and whiny and in need of her mother\u2019s attention, but Siri is too self-absorbed and involved in her own art career to pay much heed. Aura has several female friends. One is from college \u2013 Frankie (Merritt Wever from Greenberg<\/em>). While expressing great love for Frankie, Aura nevertheless backs out of sharing an apartment with her at the last moment, leaving Frankie in the lurch. Aura claims that it\u2019s because her mother has become dependent on her and needs her, when it\u2019s actually the other way around.<\/p>\n

At a party, the hostess, Ashlynn (Amy Seimetz from Joe Swanberg\u2019s Alexander the Last<\/em>) manages to get Aura hooked up with a potential boyfriend, Jed (Alex Karpovsky), whose YouTube videos, unlike Aura\u2019s, have gained him minor celebrity status on the Internet. When they meet, Jed tells Ashlynn, \u201cI thought you told me there was going to be some grinding at this party . . . like straight-up, eighth grade-style grinding.\u201d With a deadpan delivery, Ashlynn replies, \u201cNo, I said eighth grade-style crying. We\u2019re all going to cry together.\u201d This exchange epitomizes Dunham\u2019s understated, but considerable humor.<\/p>\n

At the same party, Aura re-meets a wacky childhood friend with a British accent named Charlotte (Jemima Kirke), who promptly slaps Aura in the face. She screams, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry I slapped you. I\u2019m just so overwhelmed. Aura, are you here? Are you here?\u201d It turns out that Aura has been deliberately avoiding Charlotte since high school. The two smoke pot together at Charlotte\u2019s place afterward, even though Charlotte discloses that she\u2019s spent time in rehab. She asks Aura, \u201cCan\u2019t we just start again as new friends, who were old friends?\u201d<\/p>\n

After watching Aura\u2019s videos, Charlotte declares her a genius. Charlotte, who wears so much makeup she could easily be mistaken for a mime, curates art shows in Brooklyn and lives on her father\u2019s credit card. She also gives Aura a tip about a hostess job at a neighborhood bistro. Despite Aura\u2019s lack of experience, she does manage to get hired. Almost immediately she becomes attracted to the restaurant\u2019s egotistical sous chef, Keith (David Call).<\/p>\n

Both of Aura\u2019s romantic escapades don\u2019t end up well. Jed merely uses her because he needs a place to crash while he\u2019s in New York City. He stays with her at her loft when Siri and Nadine are away scouting colleges, but their relationship remains platonic. Upon returning, Siri doesn\u2019t approve of Jed and eventually insists that he leave. Keith lives with his girlfriend, but he really wants Aura to get him some Vicodin. Keith is a no-show for their first date, causing Aura to quit her hostess job.<\/p>\n

When Charlotte arranges for Aura\u2019s video to be shown in a group exhibit at an art gallery in Dumbo, Keith appears and the two have sex about as fast as Roger and Florence in Noah Baumbach\u2019s Greenberg<\/em><\/a>. Once again, Dunham\u2019s portrayal of Aura in this situation is hardly flattering, but it\u2019s nevertheless extremely humorous. To her credit, Lena Dunham is not at all afraid to have the joke be at her expense.<\/p>\n

Tiny Furniture<\/em>, however, is less about romance and Aura finding her place in the world than it is about mother and daughter relationships or about the changing relationship between parents and their kids in this particular generation. Lena views her mother as a friend and even a role model, even though she craves more attention from Siri, who is rather cold and aloof and, after she hurts her back, glides through the loft like Morticia from The Addams Family<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Like Mikey in Momma\u2019s Man<\/em>, once back home, Aura also regresses. She walks around in the equivalent of her underwear. She begins to talk in a childish voice like a little girl, at times calling Siri, \u201cMommy.\u201d Like Mikey, Aura also winds up sitting in her mother\u2019s lap. She also finds it hard to leave and explodes at her mother and sister \u2013 she refers to the two of them as a \u201cgang\u201d \u2013 for not supporting her emotionally and making her feel like an outcast in her own home.<\/p>\n

Although the motivation for Mikey getting stuck at home in Momma\u2019s Man<\/em> is never clear, he lies to his parents about his situation. Aura, on the other hand, tells Siri all about the sexual fling she\u2019s just had, including the odd setting and the fact that she didn\u2019t use protection. I recognize that there\u2019s a gender difference at work in the two films. I can also assure you that I never would have dreamed of discussing such things with my parents.<\/p>\n

Parents of boomer kids wanted them to have better lives, which is why they made incredible sacrifices to send their children to college. As a result, though bridged by love, a chasm developed between the two generations. Parents acted like parents not friends. Momma\u2019s Man<\/em> and Tiny Furniture<\/em> are about young people who have hip, educated, and highly successful parents.<\/p>\n

These days, there\u2019s something almost incestuous occurring between some kids and their parents, such as Aura\u2019s need to sleep in the same bed with her mom. Parents and kids expect to be close friends. They befriend each other on Facebook, where young people have few qualms about disclosing extremely personal aspects of their lives. In an interview<\/a>, Lena Dunham comments, “I clearly project oversharing, it’s what I do!”<\/p>\n

To me, Tiny Furniture<\/em> feels very much a product of this current generation, whereas Momma\u2019s Man<\/em> doesn\u2019t. This makes sense because Azazel Jacobs is considerably older than Dunham. Aura reveals at the end that she aspires to be as successful as her mother. When she adds that she wants to be as successful as Nadine, who has just won a major poetry prize, Siri indicates that\u2019s going to be much harder. The film mimics Andrew Bujalski\u2019s films<\/a> in the abrupt cut that ends the film.<\/p>\n

Dunham employs a type of naturalism that has become the prevalent style of many younger filmmakers today. But she and her extremely talented cinematographer, Jody Lee Lipes, who also shot Antonio Campos\u2019s Afterschool<\/em><\/a>, wisely decide not to use a hand-held camera. They favor wide shots that capture the expansive space of the loft, which is often divided compositionally by large stacks of books. The use of wide shots helps to create some distance from events that might otherwise seem indulgent.<\/p>\n

Lena Dunham might play a sad sack, clownish figure, but don\u2019t be fooled for a moment. Her achievement in Tiny Furniture <\/em>is impressive by any standards, but it\u2019s even more extraordinary given her age. This talented filmmaker is just getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A move toward the autobiographical has been one of the more interesting developments to surface in recent indie cinema. Azazel Jacobs\u2019s Momma Man (2008) and Josh and Benny Safdie\u2019s Daddy Longlegs (2010) can serve as reference points. Lena Dunham\u2019s TinyRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4333,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/4333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}