Two Lovers
Reviewed in October 2008
Director: James Gray. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rossellini, Elias Koteas. Screenplay: James Gray and
Richard Menello (based on the short story "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky).
I still, still cannot understand why James Gray's We
Own the Night didn't earn more of its critical due last year or why I couldn't get a single person to see it, not even devoted filmgoers, after widespread
and vociferous recommendations. So not only did I head into Two Lovers feeling protective of the film and its maker, both of which received a general
drubbing at Cannes, but I caught myself after the screening trying to persuade myself of virtues that I simply didn't experience or believe while I was watching
it. Hand it to Gray and his actors for running with such a pure concept, without condescension or fuss: Joaquin Phoenix's parents are quietly pushing him toward
a relationship with family-friend Vinessa Shaw, but Phoenix is more electrified by wild and free Gwyneth Paltrow, who beckons across the apartment courtyard
but may well spell trouble, or at least profound disappointment. Gray and co-scripter Richard Menello don't weigh the story with sideplots or false
significance, and the actors deliver these characters without the kinds of showy, gratuitous embellishments that actors sometimes provide when they don't trust
the director or the simplicity of the script. Still, I'll be the first to concede that Two Lovers would have gained from more complexity, from a less
antiquarian dichotomy between patient good girls and erratic party girls, and from a narrative structure that didn't broadcast the Paltrow character's essential
unreliability quite so early. Phoenix in some moments finds a light, gently comic touch that is a boon to those scenes and a breakthrough for this actor, but
even when he's deftly spinning a tin-eared line into a charming little throwaway, or when he's flavoring the scene with a spontaneous or puzzling gesture, there's
a bit too much of that Marlon-picking-up-the-glove determination behind these choices, as though his "spontaneity" is actually a pragmatic tack. An early
suicide attempt, complete with potent sound design, confers a life-and-death gravity on the picture that its story about a faltering manchild with a frustrated
crush doesn't fully earn. And while it's nice to see Paltrow break free of those peevish personae she embraced, however potently, in Sylvia
and Proof, she doesn't endow the movie with as much detail or charisma as she probably should, nor as much as she might have
managed if Gray had restricted her character to the kind of exalting, peripheral presence that might better have justified Phoenix's impulsive and inobservant
responses.
More intriguing are Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov as Phoenix's parents, both of them biting their tongues about Phoenix and his potential
life-choices, but they remain minor roles, hampered further by the script's irritating bashfulness about the Jewishness of the family, a detail that is concertedly raised and then just as
pointedly dropped. Two Lovers has a feeling for location and texture that lots of movies don't even attempt, and as in all Gray movies (including the
bad one, Little Odessa), there are still shots and fleeting moments that communicate more about time and character than do several of the extended,
scripted scenes. Even with motifs as simple as cellphones and text-messaging, Gray captures something about the contemporary obstacles to easy and focused
affection, and he also drums up some interesting tension between these bleeping, intrusive gadgets and the old-fashioned Hollywood classicism of the film's
predominant style. Still, that doesn't feel like enough payoff for a movie that feels gun-shy and hemmed in by this redirection in Gray's career. Maybe he really does need
some Russian gangsters on the scene to conjure and release his talent? I'll keep plugging for Gray and for We Own the Night in particular, but while
I didn't dislike or resent Two Lovers, it's hard to imagine recommending it. Grade:C
