I'm sure like everyone else in the World, I've had a rather unhealthy obsession to Lena Dunham in the last year or so. Also like everyone else, I fell in love with her acting and writing whilst watching Girls. A brilliant HBO series that captures, like she envisions in the series, the generation of the modern day woman. People call it the new Sex and the City. Yes it has New York, yes the main characters are four women but it's very different. It's gritty and not quite polished, sexually ambiguous and down right hilarious. We've needed a drama like this for awhile. We're seeing more and more women taking the leading role in television recently for example, Zooey Deschenel in New Girl and Clare Danes in Homeland. Lena Dunham is really paving the way for women in television and film.
Girls wasn't enough, I wanted to see what else she'd made. Tiny Furniture is a film she produced, wrote, directed and starred in. It includes very much of the same actors as Girls and also the same themes. She taps into the struggle of being a graduated college student who doesn't quite know what she's doing or where she's going yet. As a third year University student with the same dilemma, I relate enormously with this frequent theme.
As a whole I really enjoyed Tine Furniture. You understand at the end, that Aura (Dunham) really has hit rock bottom and want to believe that things get better for her. Aura is disconnected and self conscious. She befriends Jed, Alex Karpovsky and Charlotte, Jemima Kirk who both star in Girls. I find these relationships strange. She takes Jed in and tries to help him even though he is relatively more successful than she is. Charlotte seems to have everything but is crippled with loneliness and fake friends. There are no chemistry between Charlotte and that seems deliberate. It's a film about people's changing personalities and there reluctance in life. None of them want proper jobs, they want to creatively make something of themselves but don't really know how as they don't know who they are yet. Dunham plays the most real person I've seen outside of a documentary. I'm not sure if that's because her Mother and Sister were playing her Mother and Sister in the film or because the set was actually their Tribeca loft, but she really portrays this character in a modest way. She isn't sexy, charismatic or mercurial but we believe that she deserves to be happy. It isn't a perfect film but it gets under your skin. I was taken aback with how honest it was.
After watching Tiny Furniture I was interested in what else she had written. I came across Nobody Walks, a film she does not star in. I was surprised because there was a lot of actors in it that I admire. John Krasinski from The Office, Olivia Thirlby who was hilarious in Juno and Rosemarie De Witt who was featured in Mad Men.
The performances are good. But not alot happens. We see a dynamic of a pretty laid back family get tested when a young artist stays with them (Thirlby) so she can complete her film. She is a very sexual character, she frustrates the people around her. Thirlby plays it well with what she is given, and pulls off the sexual tension in subtle way.
The film premiered in the Sundance Film Festival and won a Jury Prize. I did like the film. I enjoy character study films, but nothing of much importance happens to justify their motivations. Unfortunately for Dunham Tiny Furniture and Girls are much funnier and smarter than Nobody Walks. It's a frustrating film with pointless minimalism, it suggests emptiness more than mystery. None the less, I enjoyed it and was satisfied with walking away from these troubled characters at the end.
Lena Dunham really knows how to write complex characters with many layers. I'm so looking forward to the third season of Girls and for her to write more features. I don't think my obsession will stop any time soon. She'll be around for a long time!
"Sometimes there's a person who you know looks right and when they walk, that walk makes ladies turn to their window and admire, I see you with the accurate eyes of the sun. You will never have anything or anyone you want, least of all me." - Nobody Walks
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