I guess every now and again a film comes along that really touches you. I'm pretty lucky. I had House of 1000 Corpses recently, but a little while before that I saw a film called "Lars and the Real Girl" from 2007, and that one touched me pretty spectacularly as well. Directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Ryan Gosling, I don't know... I was just touched, throughout, and not many films can do that to me. I can be touched at various points, or at the end of a film, but to have constant... Touch (I know it sounds weird). Yeah, that takes something.
The plot, that one lonely, perhaps mentally ill, man called Lars buys a sex doll, calls it Bianca, and tries to integrate it into the small town he lives in is an original one. At first everyone, including Lars' brother and sister-in-law, is hesitant and reluctant to fully accept Lars and Bianca, but everyone kinda realises how much Lars needs Bianca and so it's not long before she's being treated as just another member of the town.
I guess this one just boiled down to the character and the way he was written and acted. If you put a good character in your movie, then that gives it a roughly 90% higher chance of being liked by me, and this one had Ryan Gosling's incredible performance as main character Lars Lindstrom. Man, that performance was something. I'm a huge fan of Gosling anyway, but he really put something into the role. The first thing I noticed was that he wasn't "tic-y", like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, he was more... It was like he embodied the role, instead of trying to show it off. It was full of tiny little details, and you could tell he'd really understood what had happened to Lars and tried his hardest to get that on screen, which is amazing acting in my opinion.
I guess, and this is a personal thing, that I was touched so much by this film because in some ways I could actually understand and, I guess, relate to Lars and his behaviour- I've yet to order a sex doll (although never say never...)- but in all seriousness, Lars had this pervasive goodness to him that was impossible not to fall for. There's a scene early on in the film where Lars' sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer, in another good performance) rushes out shouting as Lars drives back home, and Lars gets out thinking something is wrong. He quickly realises that Karin only wants Lars to come over for dinner, but the way Lars panics, and then repeats "you scared me" over and over afterwards allows us to get a depth of how good a person he is; that goodness is ingrained in him. I've done a fairly shitty job of describing that scene, it definitely needs to be seen to be understood, but it was from there in that I knew I was in safe hands, and the film only got better as it went on.
A mention must, of course, go to Nancy Oliver who wrote the screenplay, and what an intelligent, insightful screenplay it is. The film could have gone a number of ways (Lars could be creepy, for example), but it always seems to go the right way; certain elements that could have been just wrong (how the townspeople react, etc), seem natural and unforced, and in particular how the Church-goers react also gives rise to the best line in the film (which I won't ruin here, but look out for it). A quick scan of the IMDB reveals that she has a history mainly in TV, but films like this make me wish she wrote more.
That's all I really have to say on this one. I was just... Side-swiped by how lovely it all was. I guess it isn't for everyone, but if you're even moderately open-minded, then give it a try. 10/10 from me, again (my second 10/10 in three days, good heavens).
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