TINY FURNITURE @ Alamo Drafthouse

Lena Dunham’s awkwardly charming debut reflects her longstanding career
Although a polarizing figure, Lena Dunham has created some of the most quintessential millennial coming-of-age films of the 2010s. Her breakout, oddball SXSW indie TINY FURNITURE was the blueprint for her hit TV series Girls, and also starred Jemima Kirke and Alex Karpovsky.
In the film, Dunham plays a version of herself: Aura, an aspiring film graduate who returns to live with her mom and sister in New York after feeling the independence of college. Aura is ready for her career to begin, but doesn’t know where to begin, and takes up a restaurant gig to make money while she sorts out her goals.
Dunham’s projects have always felt personal, but there’s a certain rawness to TINY FURNITURE that’s uncomfortably disturbing but almost impossible to look away from the trainwreck. In the wake of her new memoir Famesick, it’s nostalgic to go back to see where it all began.