Before "Girls": Lena Dunham's "Tiny Furniture"
Nearly every character in Tiny Furniture is annoying, irritating, exasperating – and that’s
exactly what makes the film so funny and engaging. Lena Dunham’s movie is the epitome of
Semi-Autobiographical Micro-Budget Mumblecore:
made for the astonishing sum of $45,000, shot largely in her mother’s
apartment, with her mother and sister playing her mother and sister, and Dunham
most certainly playing a version of herself.
But it’s mumblecore with a difference:
it’s not only beautifully shot in widescreen HD (by Jody Lee Lipes),
with each scene exquisitely composed and lighted; it is written and performed
in a distinctive comic voice. And Lena
Dunham accomplished all this two years ago, at the preposterously precocious
age of 23.