Lars and the Real Girl (2007) | Director: Craig Gillespie | Sidney Kimmel Entertainment | IMDB: tt0805564
Understated debut film by Craig Gillespie that, nevertheless, reached three 2007 top-ten lists (Dennis Harvey – Variety; Joe Morgenstern – Wall Street Journal; Kenenth Turan – Los Angeles Times). This was a very impressive year – check this list which is, by no means, all-inclusive: There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, Atonement, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Michael Clayton, In The Valley of Elah, Gone Baby Gone, The Kite Runner, Once, I’m Not There, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Into the Wild, The Lives of Others, you know, I really could go on. Nevertheless, I consider this a year with a few out-of-bounds hyped but unsatisfying films: Margot at the Wedding, Superbad, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac, and two that I’m not sure will age gracefully: The Savages, and Juno. If I had to draw comparisons to another 2007 film, it would be the very good and satisfying Dan in Real Life. Yes, there are films that make you feel good and you should embrace that feeling more often.
Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a shy and withdrawn young man living in a small nameless town, much resembling a Minnesota landscape. He works and attends church but that’s about it concerning his social functioning. He lives in the garage of his deceased parents’ house, now inhabited by his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer). Karin tries in vain to include Lars in their family life, asking him in very persuasive mode to come to breakfast or dinner. Karin is the perfect sister-in-law – now pregnant – concerned about Lars voluntary retreat. Lars spends his evenings alone inside the small flat-garage. One day, a work colleague shows him a website featuring full size and “anatomically correct” vinyl sex dolls. A few weeks later, Lars receives a crate with his own doll, introducing her (Bianca) to his family as a paraplegic missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent whose luggage has been stolen (as well as her wheelchair). Bianca is Lars new and (you may guess, first) girlfriend.
The film has everything to go wrong. From the premise above, you’re correct in believing that it best describes a crude comedy. It does not. It works beautifully. Bianca is Lars way of overcoming his lack of human touch, his bitter pain and his fear for his about-to-be-born-nephew causing danger to his mother (Lars mother died during labour, delivering him). The community overcomes the fact that Bianca is a doll, treating her as the woman she “really is”. Some criticism was raised concerning the fact that the whole community is supportive. Well, in what world do you live and, in what world would you like, in fact, to live? Ditto.
