Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Kelli Garner, Paul Schneider

- Reviewed by Vickie

Forget what the studio’s marketing department would have you believe: Lars and the Real Girl is not, despite their efforts to convince you otherwise, a wacky comedy about a moron who falls in love with a sex doll. It’s not crass or cheap, and at no point do the filmmakers insert a scene of a man consummating his relationship with his blow-up girlfriend. Instead, what appears on the surface to be an absurdist comedy that could derail into camp at any moment, turns out to be a very thoughtful, poignant story about a troubled guy—who’s cut himself off from the world—learning to open up and reconnect via an imagined scenario.

Ryan Gosling is Lars Lindstrom, an extremely introverted, awkward office drone who lives in the garage behind the house owned by his fed-up older brother (Paul Schneider) and his far more understanding and compassionate wife (Emily Mortimer). Lars is withdrawn from other people and even the slightest human touch causes him to recoil in pain, which makes his life a decidedly solitary, lonely one. But when he orders himself a life-sized, life-like “sex doll” off the internet, a new chapter begins in his life. Soon, he and “Bianca” (who looks a little like Angelina Jolie) are an inseparable pair—Lars treats her as though she was a real woman, complete with a life story (she’s a paraplegic missionary) and goals for the future. Initially aghast, the locals soon begin to treat Bianca the same way Lars does—inviting her out to events, treating her to makeovers at the local salon—at the urging of his therapist (Patricia Clarkson). But how long can they maintain the charade? Or is it a charade, after all? And what happens to Lars’ prospects for love with a living, breathing woman if his life, however it is evolving, remains wrapped up in plastic?

Blessed with gentle, understated performances from Gosling, Mortimer and Clarkson, Lars drifts along slowly, subtly winning over the audience and asking us to perhaps think twice about what constitutes “true love.” Any number of inferences can be drawn from the story of such an unlikely romance—what makes one couple better than another? who is anyone to judge the happiness of someone else? and what makes one person’s journey any more valid than that of another if the end result is the same? In the same way that the townsfolk open their hearts to Lars and his new relationship, so do we. For all intents and purposes, Bianca is just as much a three-dimensional character as anyone else onscreen. And, by the time tragedy strikes, only the coldest of those hearts will remain unmoved by the plight of the endearing characters involved.

The DVD of Lars and the Real Girl includes a trailer, a deleted scene called "Bathtub", a featurette "The Real Story of Lars and the Real Girl" (which is your basic "making of", dealing with the origins of the story, the casting, etc.), and a short silly featurette "A Real Leading Lady" where cast and crew talk about their female-doll co-star completely deadpan ("She learned all of her lines phoenetically," says Gosling).

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