Before she filtered all of her creativity into the wonderfully quirky and oddly engaging television show Girls, as well as becoming someone who courted controversy just as much as she garnered acclaim, Lena Dunham was a young writer and director intent on making her mark in an industry that was decidedly hostile to female filmmakers, particularly those outside the canon of great directors. However, she made her breakthrough with Tiny Furniture, a small film with a lot of incredible nuances, which became an almost undeniable debut for someone who had not been particularly well-known in any capacity beforehand (having only made a few experimental short films and appearing in minor roles in similarly obscure independent productions), and therefore didn’t have any previous sense of popularity that could assist in the promotion and attention directed towards this film. Instead, we find that Tiny Furniture is entirely built on Dunham’s extraordinary filmmaking prowess – it is undeniably quite rough around the edges, and it is a debut work, but its earnest sense of direction and willingness to be vulnerable and honest is an exceptional credit to her gifts, and we find that every aspect of the film feels genuine and complex, which is quite a surprise considering how relatively inexperienced she was at the time. Often, the most inspiring works are not those that are carefully constructed after years of meticulous calculation but rather created spontaneously, which is often the foundation for truly inspiring works of fiction, especially when looking at someone with Dunham’s distinct and varied perspective.

As a writer and director, Dunham has always gravitated towards a certain kind of story, namely the experiences of being a young woman in a world that is getting increasingly difficult to understand, yet there are clear changes that are ongoing that make it both confusing and empowering, depending on one’s perspective. She may have developed these ideas extensively over the six years in which she worked on Girls, but it is almost as if Tiny Furniture is a dress rehearsal for that acclaimed show, a prototype of the same themes, which are primarily about a young woman who is caught in that ambigious space between stages in her life, where she still feels too immature to truly embrace adulthood. Arguably, it is slightly difficult to relate to the main character’s supposed plight (which is something that we found Dunham expanding on in later works), since much like Hannah Horvath, Aura in Tiny Furniture is (at least at the outset) a spoiled brat who believes she is entitled to live a comfortable life provided by her parents, but is forced to realize that life is not always going to hand her everything she desires without the necessarily hard work that accompanies it. This kind of meandering, Upper West Side comedy is certainly not something that resonates with many of us, but yet we cannot feel some sense of empathy for this character, since Dunham makes her so engaging and interesting, and we start to understand her perspective – we may not necessarily agree with it, but there is still value in what she brings to the conversation, and this film demonstrates many of the more endearing concepts that simmer beneath the surface of such a narrative.

However, there is more beneath the surface of Tiny Furniture, which is not only a film about a young woman on a journey of self-discovery. Instead, we discover partway through that this is covertly a story of family, which has often been a recurring theme in Dunham’s work, but one that has not been as foregrounded as much as it was here (although both of her subsequent feature films place a heavy emphasis on familial connections, just not quite to this extent), which is both fascinating and incredibly touching, especially considering how aloof the film appears to be at the start. Dunham has received a lot of criticism for telling stories about entitled people who believe themselves to be the centre of the world, and while this is true to an extent, it tends to overlook the fact that it can make for very engaging storytelling, especially when it comes to a narrative in which we see cross-generational interactions, and how each of the three women that exist within the world of this film are just as selfish and self-centred as the other, just expressing it in different ways. This may seem cynical, and Dunham has never been against crafting unlikable characters – but yet it all feels so natural and honest through her perspective, which is detailed and always compelling, and oddly touching by the time we reach the end of the story, where it becomes clear that friendships fade and relationships rarely last – but it’s our family that will always be there at the end of the day, and that love sometimes means undergoing the challenge of understanding one another and how we all operate in the world in individual ways, but share common traits that bind us together.

These themes are not only contained in the story since Tiny Furniture proves to be a family affair even in how it is constructed. Beyond casting herself in the central role, Dunham recruits her own family, namely her mother Laurie Simmons and sibling Cyrus Grace Dunham, to play her on-screen family, which is a fascinating choice that proves to add a lot of complexity to the film, which is based primarily around the dynamics that exist between these characters. Neither her mother nor her sibling had much experience acting, and we can see how there are a few moments where their performances feel slightly unrefined and raw, which is a great asset that Dunham captures perfectly and in absolutely vibrant, meaningful detail. It is never pompous or unnecessarily convoluted, but it has an earnestness that is difficult to ignore, especially when it comes to developing the connections that exist between the characters. Jemima Kirke and Alex Karpovsky play major supporting roles, and considering they would also reunite with Dunham in a couple of years as series regulars on Girls, this feels like they are testing out the waters for the characters that would eventually flourish into Jessa Johansson and Ray Ploshansky respectively, especially since they share very common traits, namely the free-spirited wild child of indeterminate origin and the fiercely intelligent but socially awkward pseudo-academic nebbish that proves to be somehow irresistible to the protagonist. It’s a strong cast that feels like it has a degree of authenticity, which is drawn from Dunham and her family bringing their natural chemistry to the film and using it as the foundation for this engaging and captivating character-based comedy.

In hindsight, it may seem obvious why Dunham became successful – while she certainly did have strong familial and interpersonal connections within the industry, nepotism can only take someone so far, and while it managed to get her foot in the door, it was the raw, unfiltered talent she demonstrated that consolidated her as an essential voice. It took her quite a while to step behind the camera again in terms of feature filmmaking (especially since she spent most of the 2010s focused on her pursuits in television), so for about a decade this was viewed as her sole directorial effort in terms of her cinematic pursuits. It may not be her most accomplished work – in terms of film, Sharp Stick managed to be a substantially more complex character study, whereas Girls is her magnum opus, a six-year project that allowed Dunham to explore every intricacy of the human condition with honesty and deep sincerity. However, as the work that established her as a great talent and essentially helped her develop many different ideas, Tiny Furniture still has a meaningful place within the culture, and it has more than earned its acclaim. Funny, heartfelt and always willing to take a risk when it was necessary, it proves to be quite a solid debut for someone who would be more adept at capturing the angst of the millennial generation better than most, which is an achievement that should never be dismissed or overlooked.