The troubled Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is thrown together with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) but he's more interested in the blonde upstairs.
If now rabbi-bearded Joaquin Phoenix is sincere in his pledge to abandon acting for rap music, the movie "Two Lovers" will be his swan song.
The troubled Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is thrown together with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) but he's more interested in the blonde upstairs.
Leonard, a charismatic but troubled young man, moves back into his childhood home following a recent heartbreak. While recovering under the watchful eye of his ...
Rating: R for language, some sexuality and brief drug use
Length: 100 minutes
Released: February 13, 2009 NY/LA
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Isabella Rossellini, Elias Koteas
Director: James Gray
Writer: James Gray, Ric Menello
It would be a worthy finale. Phoenix, 34, has been appearing in movies and TV programs since he was 6 years old, but "Two Lovers" may contain the most convincing performance of the actor's career. (And no, I'm not forgetting his role as Johnny Cash in the made-in-Memphis "Walk the Line.") The film even points the way toward the future by allowing would-be hip-hopper Phoenix to engage in a few clumsy seconds of freestyle rhyming.
In "Two Lovers," Phoenix is bipolar Leonard Kraditor, who works in his immigrant father's dry-cleaning business and lives in his old bedroom in his parents' apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. His scarred wrists testify to a history of depression.
Leonard is introduced to moviegoers just moments before he jumps into Sheepshead Bay, in what may be another unsuccessful suicide attempt. After he returns home, wet and embarrassed, this potentially melodramatic incident seems to be forgotten. This is typical of the restrained manner in which writer-director James Gray (working with co-scripter Ric Menello) handles his material. He doesn't underline "significant" moments or bits of information, but asks the viewer to be attentive to his story and sympathetic to his characters.
Leonard's father (Moni Moshonov) and mother (Isabella Rossellini) hope their son will take a shine to Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the beautiful daughter of dad's potential business partner. But Leonard becomes fascinated by the beautiful blond shiksa ensconced in the apartment upstairs. Unfortunately, the sophisticated, upper-class Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) -- a party girl who enjoys the opera -- has secrets and problems of her own.
As a relationship develops between the dark, ethnic and moody Leonard and the fair, Anglo Michelle, viewers may be reminded of Robert De Niro's obsession with Cybill Shepherd in "Taxi Driver." For all its romanticism, however, "Two Lovers" remains grounded in realism; it rejects the grand-guignol catharsis of Scorsese's film. The violence here is emotional, self-directed -- interior.
"Two Lovers" is Gray's fourth film as a director in 14 years. All his stories to date have taken place in working-class Brooklyn, but this may be his most courageous work in that it represents the first time Gray has worked without the safety net of genre -- his previous movies ("Little Odessa," "The Yards" and "We Own the Night") were police and gangster films. The result is remarkable, a movie that's earnest and symbolic (when Michelle calls Leonard's cell phone, the ringtone is Beethoven's "Für Elise," possibly written for a woman who declined the composer's proposal), with an ending that rejects both cheap cynicism and implausible happiness.
"Two Lovers" is at Malco's Ridgeway Four.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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