Dir. Craig Gillespie, US, 2007, 106 mins
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider
Review by Carol Allen
This is an unusual story about Lars (Gosling), a withdrawn young man, who chooses to live in a shack at the bottom of this brother's garden rather than in the house. Not surprisingly, because of his self imposed social isolation, he's never had a girlfriend. Until one day he sends off for a mail order sex doll and introduces her - in total chastity it must be emphasised - to his family, and later the community, as his girlfriend Bianca, who's fallen on hard times and needs looking after. On the advice of their understanding doctor (Patricia Clarkson), his brother Gus (Schneider) and Gus's wife Karin (Mortimer) go along with Lars's's delusion, as indeed do the rest of the community in the Midwestern town where they live, where Bianca accompanies Lars to church, with volunteering at the hospital and to his first ever social events, bringing him for the first time out of his isolation.
Gosling as usual is very good, disappearing into the role of the gentle, rather nerdy Lars, who has a penchant for fair isle sweaters and who cannot bear to be parted from the baby blanket he still clings onto. Lars' mother died giving birth to him so he was brought up by his now dead father and Lars now has a total fear and inability to connect with and be touched by other people. Gosling makes him very endearing and touching, with a sweet smile and the air of the classic holy fool. It is a very good hearted story, perhaps unrealistically so, which is as much about his family and the community as it is about Lars - their acceptance of his delusion involving “Bianca” in their lives, playing along so as not to hurt him. Although the main characters all have Scandinavian names, no mention is made of the fact that presumably this is a community all descended from Scandinavian settlers with a cultural heritage of self control, which implies a relationship to Lars's late father's emotionally repressed reaction to the loss of this wife and the effect this had on his younger son. The three other main characters are all convincing and well drawn – Karin, Lars's pregnant and outreaching sister-in-law, whose pregnancy is precipitating a crisis for Lars related to the way his mother died; Gus, his brother, guilt ridden over the fact that he left his young brother to cope with their father alone, and Clarkson, as the doctor, who improvises her treatment out of instinct and gets it right.
One is tempted to wonder whether such a good hearted community straight out of "It's a Wonderful Life" can still exist in the 21st century but the quality of the characterisations gives conviction to this slight but very sweet story about the power of kindness. No violence, no sex, just interesting and caring people.
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