Tiny Furniture is a 2010 American independent comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Lena Dunham.
22-year-old Aura returns home to her artist mother’s TriBeCa loft with the following: a useless film theory degree, 357 hits on her YouTube page, a boyfriend who’s left her to find himself at Burning Man, a dying hamster and her tail between her legs.
Luckily, her trainwreck childhood best friend never left home, the restaurant down the block is hiring, and ill-advised romantic possibilities lurk around every corner. Aura quickly throws away her liberal-arts clogs and careens into her old/new life: a dead-end hostess job, parties on chilly East Village fire escapes, stealing twenties out of her mother’s Prada purse, pathetic Brooklyn ‘art shows,’ prison-style tattoos done out of sheer boredom, drinking all the wine in her mother’s neatly organised cabinets, competing with her prodigious teenage sister and desperate sex in a giant metal pipe. Surrounded on all sides by what she could become, Aura just wants someone to tell her who she is.
Awards
- Nominated Gotham Awards for: Best Ensemble Cast, Breakthrough Director Award 2010
- Won Independent Spirit Award, Best First Screenplay. Nominated for Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature, Best Cinematography 2011
- Won Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award New Generation Award
- Won Sarasota Film Festival Independent Visions Award 2010
Tiny Furniture Reviews
“A darkly comic, piercing, and occasionally painful study of a young woman's quest for identity.” Philadelphia Enquirer
“extremely well-written, often funny and very touching film” The Guardian UK
“it's funny, wrenching and sharply observed, with a dispassion that suggests a real artist is at work.” Salon.com
“It's the work of a filmmaker with a stunning future.” Rolling Stone
“It's a find – funny and rueful and verbally dexterous, leavening a quippy screenplay with just enough honesty to make it stick.” Chicago Tribune
“Tiny Furniture announces Dunham as a talent to watch.” Total Film
“It's hard enough for a director to work with actors, but if you're working with your own family in your own house and depicting passive aggression, selfishness and discontent and you produce a film this good, you can direct just about anybody in just about anything.” Roger Ebert
“What Dunham lacks in polish, she makes up for in her ability to observe her generation, with the hardest truths coming at her own expense.” San Francisco Chronicle
“Much-maligned it may be, but the so-called mumblecore movement continues to turn out gems. Lena Dunham's lo-fi, witty treatment of a semi-autobiographical tale adds another dozy to the canon.” Empire
“Smartly observed and bitterly funny, the deadpan Tiny Furniture feels true to life for an entire generation struggling to find a job and make their mark on the world.” Daily Express UK