Joaquin Phoenix Goes Full Retard

TWO LOVERS

As long as we're talking about good movies with serious flaws, I think I'll take a minute to talk about a new release I saw a couple weeks ago, Two Lovers (trailer). It tells the story of Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), a young man with a history of mental illness who's moved back in with his parents after a suicide attempt. He soon meets two very different young women: Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a "good Jewish girl" whose family is going into business with his parents, and Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), a Gentile party girl in his building with a past (and perhaps present) of drug use and a very unhealthy relationship with a married man. Leonard's relationships with each of these women deepens simultaneously, unbeknownst to either or to his parents, as the necessity for Leonard finally to chose looms larger and larger.

There's a lot to like about Two Lovers. It's beautifully shot and carefully paced. The performances are good in a straightforward way, for the most part avoiding flashy, obvious drama in favor of subtle interactions and little moments. I especially liked that, unlike oh so many formulaic romantic dramas and comedies, the movie doesn't present Michelle as the free spirit who Leonard's made for and Sandra as the ugly stepsister being forced on him by his parents. Though Sandra's definitely the safer choice, she's also a beautiful and loving person who relates to Leonard in many ways; and though he connects much more passionately with Michelle, she's a deeply scarred person who may have more potential to hurt him than to help him.

On the other hand, there were some things that definitely hampered my enjoyment of the movie, and most of them had to do with Phoenix's character, Leonard. Basically, he acts like a fourteen-year-old boy, and he talks like a retarded fourteen-year-old boy. Maybe it's just his thick, unenunciated Brooklyn accent, but none of the other characters reminded me of someone who just got Novacaine shots at the dentist. Speaking the way he did, I really had a hard time believing that his mental problems were no worse than bipolar disorder. In addition to his slurred speech, Leonard seemed like an adolescent stuck in a thirty-year-old man's body. His walk and movements look clumsy, like he just had a growth spurt and is still getting used to his body. Not only does he live with his parents, but his tiny, child-sized room includes posters on the walls and—I can't get over this—an aquarium. Maybe we're supposed to chalk this up to overprotective parents—though he's lived on his own in the past and was even engaged—or his mental and emotional problems—though the movie never really goes into this after mentioning it in passing. I think his name only reinforced all this for me; Leonard from Brooklyn may have been the one on screen, but the one I was thinking of was Lennie from Of Mice and Men. As good as much of this movie was, I just couldn't buy its basic premise—that this guy could get two beautiful women to fall in love with him over the same short period of time.

To sum up, Two Lovers is a 50% movie, not because I didn't particularly like it or dislike it, but because I both liked it and disliked it in roughly equal measure.

P.S. — "Looking forward to it" doesn't begin to describe how I feel about Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. I don't mean to go overboard, having only seen that trailer and this early clip, but I have no doubt at this point that it'll be in my top 5 of 2009, if not number 1. This is a film I've seen in my dreams.