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.

Continue reading my review on Cinema Sentries.