Lars and the Real Girl - Review

Director: Craig Gillespie
Writer: Nancy Oliver
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Patricia Clarkson
Runtime: 1 hr 46 minutes

For a long time, the set-up for Lars and the Real Girl kept me from seeing it.

Ryan Gosling plays Lars, a smalltown simple man. He lives in his brother's garage, is terribly shy, and has a social life of zero. Around any office watercooler, he would be termed "quiet" at best, "loser" at worst. His sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) is desperate for him to meet a woman and find happiness, while his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) merely says "that's the way Lars is."

Later in the film, to the delight of sister-in-law Karin, Lars does indeed find someone. He tells Gus and Karin that he met the woman on the internet, that she's shy, uses a wheelchair, and her English isn't that good. The mystery woman's name is Bianca, and Lars would like to bring her over for dinner. Wonderful!

Cut to the stunned faces of Gus and Karin as they sit on the coach and meet Bianca. It turns out that Bianca, whom Lars mentions is from Brazil, is not a woman at all. She's an anatomically correct sex toy. She can pass as a human being from twenty feet away, until you notice that she doesn't breathe, doesn't blink, doesn't move.

This was the set-up that scared me away from the movie. I thought it was going to be a dumb retread of Weekend at Bernie's or some such, and that I would have to sit through an hour and a half of lame sex gags.

I could never have been so wrong.

The film is incredibly good, and I think it probably should have been up for the Best Picture Oscar last year, and that it should have won.

Elia Kazan was fond of saying that the lens captures everything. If an actor truly believes in what they're doing, they don't have to act. The lens will see that belief and translate it to the audience.

The key to Lars and the Real Girl is the belief the cast and crew have in the movie. Though it has plenty of humour, it never goes for cheap laughs and gags. Instead, it's a character study of a man who truly believes that this mannequin is alive. She has his same faults, his same fears. In her, he's found the one person who understands him.

The film is fresh, and gives you the feeling that you haven't seen anything like it before. The script and cast are excellent. Watch as the townsfolk first think it's crazy to see Lars going about the town with his plastic girlfriend. Then watch as they slowly come to accept it. Then they too begin to treat Bianca as a living, breathing person. The lady at the dress shop gives Bianca a "job" three days a week, posing in the window. The hospital asks her to "volunteer" in the kids section, so she can prop up the books the kids are hearing from her tape-player "voice."

It isn't treated as madcap comedy. Lars' doctor (an excellent Patricia Clarkson) has him come in once a week, so she can give Bianca the occasional check-up. This is, of course, a ruse for the doctor to speak with Lars and attempt to understand his delusions. It is handled perfectly by the director and the cast. Instead of going for easy laughs, the film digs deeper and deeper into all kinds of questions. What's wrong with Lars? What's wrong with us? What makes a person a person? If enough people treat anything with dignity and caring, when does the "thing" become a "life"?

It has been a long time since I saw a film that went from wire to wire without a hiccup. This movie is satisfying as hell and you should see it when you can.

Photos: Yahoo Movies