Film 34: “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007)
It may say more about me than this film, but I laughed for a hour half straight, beginning at the moment that too-shy-to-be-touched Lars (Ryan Gosling) introduces his new girlfriend Bianca (a blow-up “Real Doll”) to his brother Gus and his wife Karin. After all, it seems to be all anyone – ladies at church, the work receptionist, his family – ever asks him about. “Lars, are you seeing anyone? Don’t you have a girlfriend yet?” Why not? She’s the perfect dinner guest – small appetite, friendly smile and easy-going on the dress code.
Alfred Hitchcock made edge-of-your-seat thrillers decades before special effects could show us the details of any biological terror. He didn’t need them, because as he famously said, and I’m paraphrasing wildly here, “The horror is in the reaction, not the deed.” “Lars and the Real Girl” is that kind of reaction film. At first, we laugh because of how horrified everyone else is at Lars’s sudden delusion. His brother Gus, played with real man skepticism and pain by Paul Schneider, seethes. How the hell is he going to explain this one at the factory? This is a sex toy, not a girlfriend. Can’t his brother be normal and hide her in the bedroom? Why should Lars suddenly be nuts? It’s not funny at all to Gus, and we suspect that he might just pop the thing to prove a point. “Fix it,” he demands of their doctor.
Emily Mortimer, a physically fragile actress, plays Gus’s wife, Karin – and her growing belly as an expectant mother seems to weigh not just her down, but the whole family as the film progresses. At first, she and Gus hope this is a fad that will soon pass, but as she starts having trouble getting out of chairs and getting the nursery ready, Lars is asking Bianca to marry him. Karin and Gus realize, “He’s not going to get better, is he?”
This is the moment that their horror reaction – and our comic one – transcends the goofy plot device. How are they going to cope with a loved brother who can’t cope with reality?
Red-haired Patricia Clarkson, often the wild diva of the indies, instead grounds this moment. Her Doctor Dagmar, the small Far North town's resident GP and psychologist (“She says you have to be both this far north,” quips Karin) shows more sensitivity than twenty trained psychotherapists. She reacts so steadily, so naturally to Lars’s new belief system, that the entire town begins to follow suit. Beautiful comic moments attain poignance: Lars’s co-workers invite Bianca to a party, the church lady gives Bianca flowers and compliments her on “her snappy figure,” and one by one, people in Lars’s life accept her – and him.
Somewhere in there, I began to wonder why this transformation worked so well. Was the writing brilliant, or were the performances? Was it the deft direction, or the subtle scoring?
Answer: Yes. You don’t make a great film out of a bad script, and Nancy Oliver’s nuanced, steadily paced world is brilliant. Characters don’t become real people without excellent acting, and everyone here is pitch perfect. Each performance deserves an Oscar, even the smaller ones – from Lars’s action-figure obsessed cubicle mate (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) to the shy, teddy bear-loving Margo (Kelli Garner), who only wants one date with Lars before he marries Bianca. Crass direction could easily have pushed this delicate drama into the land of the absurd, but Craig Gillespie restrains the camera. No forced close-ups of Lars’s grin, no lingering body shots of Bianca’s anatomically correct body.
In fact, neither Lars, nor the entire crew of the movie, has any intention of sexually exploiting Bianca. This is a consensual, sensitive relationship – between the viewer and the small, lonely world that Lars inhabits. We want him to get better, but we don’t want him to lose the precious innocence that Bianca, his blow-up sex doll, shows us. We move from laughter and discomfort to empathy and understanding. From ridicule to love.
That, my friends, is perfect storytelling, and this is perfect filmmaking.
It may say more about me than this film, but I laughed for a hour half straight, beginning at the moment that too-shy-to-be-touched Lars (Ryan Gosling) introduces his new girlfriend Bianca (a blow-up “Real Doll”) to his brother Gus and his wife Karin. After all, it seems to be all anyone – ladies at church, the work receptionist, his family – ever asks him about. “Lars, are you seeing anyone? Don’t you have a girlfriend yet?” Why not? She’s the perfect dinner guest – small appetite, friendly smile and easy-going on the dress code.
Alfred Hitchcock made edge-of-your-seat thrillers decades before special effects could show us the details of any biological terror. He didn’t need them, because as he famously said, and I’m paraphrasing wildly here, “The horror is in the reaction, not the deed.” “Lars and the Real Girl” is that kind of reaction film. At first, we laugh because of how horrified everyone else is at Lars’s sudden delusion. His brother Gus, played with real man skepticism and pain by Paul Schneider, seethes. How the hell is he going to explain this one at the factory? This is a sex toy, not a girlfriend. Can’t his brother be normal and hide her in the bedroom? Why should Lars suddenly be nuts? It’s not funny at all to Gus, and we suspect that he might just pop the thing to prove a point. “Fix it,” he demands of their doctor.
Emily Mortimer, a physically fragile actress, plays Gus’s wife, Karin – and her growing belly as an expectant mother seems to weigh not just her down, but the whole family as the film progresses. At first, she and Gus hope this is a fad that will soon pass, but as she starts having trouble getting out of chairs and getting the nursery ready, Lars is asking Bianca to marry him. Karin and Gus realize, “He’s not going to get better, is he?”
This is the moment that their horror reaction – and our comic one – transcends the goofy plot device. How are they going to cope with a loved brother who can’t cope with reality?
Red-haired Patricia Clarkson, often the wild diva of the indies, instead grounds this moment. Her Doctor Dagmar, the small Far North town's resident GP and psychologist (“She says you have to be both this far north,” quips Karin) shows more sensitivity than twenty trained psychotherapists. She reacts so steadily, so naturally to Lars’s new belief system, that the entire town begins to follow suit. Beautiful comic moments attain poignance: Lars’s co-workers invite Bianca to a party, the church lady gives Bianca flowers and compliments her on “her snappy figure,” and one by one, people in Lars’s life accept her – and him.
Somewhere in there, I began to wonder why this transformation worked so well. Was the writing brilliant, or were the performances? Was it the deft direction, or the subtle scoring?
Answer: Yes. You don’t make a great film out of a bad script, and Nancy Oliver’s nuanced, steadily paced world is brilliant. Characters don’t become real people without excellent acting, and everyone here is pitch perfect. Each performance deserves an Oscar, even the smaller ones – from Lars’s action-figure obsessed cubicle mate (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) to the shy, teddy bear-loving Margo (Kelli Garner), who only wants one date with Lars before he marries Bianca. Crass direction could easily have pushed this delicate drama into the land of the absurd, but Craig Gillespie restrains the camera. No forced close-ups of Lars’s grin, no lingering body shots of Bianca’s anatomically correct body.
In fact, neither Lars, nor the entire crew of the movie, has any intention of sexually exploiting Bianca. This is a consensual, sensitive relationship – between the viewer and the small, lonely world that Lars inhabits. We want him to get better, but we don’t want him to lose the precious innocence that Bianca, his blow-up sex doll, shows us. We move from laughter and discomfort to empathy and understanding. From ridicule to love.
That, my friends, is perfect storytelling, and this is perfect filmmaking.
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