Girls creator Lena Dunham earned her stripes with Tiny Furniture

THE Lena Dunham thing is still niche despite her many awards and pop cultural cachet.

While Girls, created by Lena Dunham, centre, is annoying, her accomplished film Tiny Furniture shows why she earned her own TV series.

THE Lena Dunham thing is still niche despite her many awards and pop cultural cachet. Her series about privileged yet whiny New York 20-somethings, Girls, will be seen as only a minor achievement among the heady mix of dramas and comedies coming from US studio HBO.

It is of the moment in the same way leg warmers were in the 1980s. Seemingly useful but utterly disposable.

The attraction in watching a bunch of directionless yet entitled generation Y kids moaning their way around Manhattan is limited, considering how rich television drama is today. And its "meta-ness" creeps me out; its four lead cast members are daughters of highly successful baby boomer parents from the worlds of arts, entertainment and the media.

Its simplicity and tics are ripe for parody, which Saturday Night Live did superbly during its season launch a month ago as Tina Fey returned as guest host. That's worth tracking down on your favourite search engine.

Fortunately, the same week the second series of Girls (MA15+, Warner, 308min, $39.99) is released, Dunham's first feature film, Tiny Furniture (MA15+, Transmission, 98min, $39.99), is finally released in Australia.

And it's a little ripper that displays why Dunham earned her own TV series. The second series of Girls, in which her Hannah doesn't grow up, the girls don't show any real friendship and their professional advances continue to rely on flashes and luck, not graft, is not strong.

Tiny Furniture is stronger and a template, of a kind, for Girls. Dunham plays Aura, a recent college graduate who returns to her family's TriBeCa loft to seek protection as she looks for work, love and satisfaction.

The film has been pitched as one of the "mumblecore" movement of low-budget, naturalistic American independent films of no fixed narrative. It's better than the vast majority of them, though. Tiny Furniture isn't cinematic; it's almost entirely shot indoors. And it asks you meekly, rather than implores, to stick with it.

But the $25,000 film has charm and quite a bit going on conceptually. Aura's photo-artist mother Siri is played by Dunham's mother, famed photo-artist Laurie Simmons - who, like Siri, uses dolls and tiny furniture pieces set against human body parts for her art. And Dunham's sister Grace plays Aura's sibling, Nadine. Both Grace and her character are prize-winning poets. And the film is shot in her parents' apartment.

On screen, Dunham clearly is wrestling with issues she's also wrestling with off screen. She was 23 when she made this technically accomplished film.

Dunham is the most normal person she casts, other than her mum. She surrounds herself with egotists, the vacuous and the bored which, in this context, is more fascinating than in Girls.

Aura can be an irritating character yet she earns your sympathy in this witty, slight film. The difference is I don't have sympathy for any of the Girls. Tiny Furniture shows how good Dunham can be. If only she'd grow up and move beyond her Manhattan milieu.

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Twitter: @michaelbodey