A Masterpiece!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By far the worst movie I've seen this year (so far). It felt like someone is trying to make an indie hipster film because making indie hipster films are in.The acting was so so so bad. When the sisters were arguing - I thought they would break into laughter. I cared nothing for any character. They were all self-involved rude (not in a witty or interesting way either) bourgeois white people living somewhere in NYC where there you don't see two black people even in the street shots. She's home from college with no direction. Boo hoo.

TINY FURNITURE by Val Turner 15 Cert, 119 min; director; Lena Dunham; Starring Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, Jemima Kirke.Lena Dunham wrote and directed this smart comedy drama about a media student, Aura, who after graduation returns to the family home in New York, unemployed, adrift, overweight and plain. It is obvious from the thread of conflict that runs through the film, that her successful photographer mother (Laurie Simmons) and pretty intelligent sister (Grace Dunham) see Aura as an intrusion in their perfect, trendy life.As Aura drudges from one scene to another, allowing her self-centred friend Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) possible boyfriends Jed (Alex Karpousky) and Keith (David Call) wipe their feet as they walk all over her, you find yourself willing her to get a grip and take control.In truth nothing really happens in the film and a standard beginning, middle and end structure does not apply. However, despite the fact that it feels that Aura is swimming through a bowl of blancmange, this is her life and it is this sludge that holds you steady waiting for something to happen. There are poignantly funny moments particularly the conflict between mother v daughter and sister v sister and Aura's pathetic attempt to get herself into the arty scene by posting a Youtube film of her in her undies washing her teeth in a fountain.In fact Dunham spends as much time as possible in her underpants and baggy shirt, which does not flatter her unflattering shape. It is this self-effacing, actually closer to self-deprecating characteristic of Dunham that should feel refreshing but actually she does scrub up quite well and you are left irritated with her for not making the best of what she has.The film was named as Best Narrative Feature at the 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival. It also won Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards and New Generation Award by the LA Film Critics Association along with nominations for Best Cinematography and Best First Feature. Recognition has catapulted this young writer/director into the limelight and has since produced "Girls" which on the face of it appears to be a sequel to "Tiny Furniture" given that Dunham and her friend Kirke play very similar characters. It's not and you do wonder how much the audience can take of this hapless young woman.Tiny Furniture is poignant and in these present economic times the story will resonate with graduates in similar positions. Perhaps they should all do what Lena Dunham has done and make a docudrama which may suck them out of the abyss and throw them into stardom.

This quiet, unassuming movie about a recent college graduate who moves back in with her mom and sister while trying to figure out what to do with her life got under my skin and stayed there.Director Lena Dunham, who also stars in the film as Aura, has a knack for putting together individual scenes that play as if nothing of much significance is happening in them, but that when put together as a whole reveal an awful lot about the lives of her characters. Much of the film follows Aura as she aimlessly hangs out with friends, meets guys, gets a job. She's awkward and maybe an easy target, but she's also sweet and harmless and easy enough to root for. She gets on her mom's nerves and vice versa, fights with her sister, and overstays her welcome in her mom's house. We've seen it all before, right? Not really. "Tiny Furniture" may be about subject matter we've seen done a hundred times, but it felt like a totally unique take on it. In fact, it's not until the film's final moments, and when you're thinking about it afterwards, that you realize the movie isn't really that much about Aura's ennui and lack of direction; it's about her relationship with her mom, a fact that's easy to overlook by the small amount of screen time the mom has. By the end of the movie, Aura's increasingly destructive and increasingly disturbing behavior seems less like a lonely girl's attempts to fill the boring hours of her day, and instead like the ever-more-desperate attempt of a child trying to force an absentee parent into taking notice of her.This is a really wonderful movie with tiny nuances in the direction and acting that set it apart from other indie films like it.Grade: A

By Maurice Jones 'Tiny Furniture' has a 'hipster' creed all over it by the look, which makes most people tray away from it. Myself being one of these people, I none the less decided to check it out as you can never always tell something just by the trailer and I heard Lena Dunham's life is as portrayed in the movie, so it wasn't necessarily a style choice, not that that's important.'Tiny Furniture' opens as you'd expect it too, down to the music. It unleashes a post 'Juno' independent film vibe that makes you wish more creative thought was put into this opening, however that's not the point to the film and if that is what Lena Dunham wanted to do based on reality, so be it.Immediately from the start you get an amateurish film making shot after shot, from which you start to feel as I did; how did Lena Durham even get her own T.V. show? The acting itself, is.... well, amateurish to say the least at first and once to get to meet Aura's friends some might not be able to get past the fact that everyone in the film looks dressed straight out of the 'Urban Outfitters' catalogue but this is not unbelievable or relevant. You soon realize that the spark of the film is not the style but the fact that the way the characters react to each other is quite real even to the point that the film allows you to figure out for yourself as to what Aura actually feels for her friends and family. It doesn't beat you over the head as to how to perceive each character but rather truly puts enough out there, and leaves you to put down your own slight possibility of who they are, kind of like figuring people out in real-life, which isn't easy to portray on paper. The film is also very aware of what the audience thinks or what the audience would do in certain situations. So, when you say to yourself, I hope this goes down this way because that's what would happen, it does. And with that I give Lena Dunham credit for being true to her audience self, therefore being a true movie fan and doing something realistic for the sake of logic and not for the sake of relating, which someone might misconstrued the movies point as. A movie like this is around to show that this reality is okay and exists, because as we all know, society imitates art. If you don't relate to this movie, it's probably because you're not in your twenties or you're less neurotic of a person but trust me the setting of the movie couldn't be less of the point. This is a different looking version of a too real reality of today's twenty-somethings.In the end 'Tiny Furniture' actually respects reality and what it has to offer as entertainment, avoiding emotional clichés, unlike the movie 'Young Adult' which involves many clichés, yet expects us to think it's different after it's all said and done. There are obvious problems with 'Tiny Furniture' but I've still haven't seen many movies like it, that respects the truth so much to allow it to play out as it does, that's why I like it, it's just straight up refreshing. To understand 'Tiny Furniture' you have to sit down and watch it in its entirety and see what happens, like life itself.