Review: ‘Two Lovers’

TWO LOVERS director/writer James Gray has made three previous films, all crime stories. I saw LITTLE ODESSA, THE YARDS, and TAKE BACK THE NIGHT at theatres and admire Gray’s style. Dark, complex, and stripped of Hollywood gloss, Gray’s gritty films are throwbacks to a 1970’s style of realism. He’s now applied that style to the romance genre and his latest film, TWO LOVERS, is an engrossing anti-blockbuster, completely lacking in the slickness and preciousness found in most modern Hollywood romances, and a much better film for it.

TWO LOVERS opens with a half-hearted suicide attempt through drowning by Leonard Kraditor, played by Joaquin Phoenix. We soon learn that Leonard is distraught over a recent break-up with his fiancée, and has moved back in with his anxious Jewish parents in the Queens neighborhood of New York City. Underemployed as a delivery boy for his father’s dry cleaners, Leonard is a lost soul. Things start to look up for him as Dad’s business is about to merge with a dry-cleaner magnate (Bob Ari) who has a perfectly lovely Jewish daughter Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) and an eye on Leonard as both future business partner and son-in-law. The sweet Sandra, whose favorite movie is SOUND OF MUSIC, becomes devoted to Leonard. But soon Leonard meets his new neighbor Michelle, a sexy blonde temptress played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Michelle, a needy pill-popper, is everything that Leonard does not need at this point in his life, so of course he is instantly smitten. To him, she represents an exciting escape from his parent’s plan for his life. Michelle however sees Leonard more as a shoulder to lean on as she navigates an affair with her married boyfriend Ronald (Elias Koteas). The film deals with Leonard’s crisis as he is torn between these two lovers, two very different women.

Sandra is grounded and comes from a stable family while Michelle is a flighty mess so the choice should be obvious, but the point of TWO LOVERS is the irrationality of obsessive love. TWO LOVERS is anchored by a moving central performance by Grey regular Joaquin Phoenix (the part was written for him). While the movie lacks sentiment in the typical forced Hollywood way, Phoenix’s Leonard is an extremely likable character (try not to smile when he break-dances) and I found myself rooting for him. Isabella Rossellini also shines in a supporting role as Leonard’s worried mother without resorting to stereotypical Jewish histrionics. Shaw is fine as Sandra but it seems a bit of a stretch that she and Michelle, both incredibly gorgeous women, wouldn’t have more suitors in New York than the mopey mumbler Leonard and the older balding Ronald. I almost wish a less attractive actress had been cast as Sandra as it would have made Leonard’s angst a bit more believable. Even better is Paltrow as Michelle. There’s a heartbreaking scene where she exposes her breast to Leonard across the courtyard that exposes her own confusion.

There is no violence, no shocks, and frankly no real surprises to be found in TWO LOVERS, but that’s not a complaint. After all of the loud Christmas blockbusters it’s refreshing to see an American film lacking in cuteness and even humor (though I laughed out loud when Leonard proclaims THE SOUND OF MUSIC as “underrated”). I highly recommend TWO LOVERS.