TWO LOVERS FILM REVIEW

James Gray's powerfully emotional dramas have such a distinctive, deliberate quality; Gray has always been a craftsman working with heavy materials, very different from Hollywood's lightweight alloy. This, his third feature, is set once again in the Russian-Jewish communities of Brooklyn. Like his other films, The Yards and We Own the Night, it is unafraid of the grand gesture, but this often looks oddly like an adapted stage-play - Two Lovers takes Gray closer to the idiom of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams.

1. Two Lovers
2. Production year: 2008
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 110 mins
6. Directors: James Gray
7. Cast: Elias Koteas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Isabella Rossellini, Joaquin Phoenix, Moni Moshonov, Vinessa Shaw
8. More on this film

Joaquin Phoenix plays a sensitive young guy who has moved back into the Brooklyn apartment of his parents (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov) following a breakdown. They try to set him up with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) the beautiful daughter of a business colleague, but instead he falls deeply in love with the ditsy, beautiful neighbour Michelle, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.
Everything about Leonard's Jackie-v-Marilyn dilemma is socked over with Gray's trademark sincerity, but I found it difficult to credit, and his situation, though viewed through the smoked glass of gloomy realism, is an indulgent fantasy. The basic problem is not merely that Shaw's Sandra is sexier and more interesting than Paltrow's blonde siren - a subjective judgment, to be sure - but that pursuing the simple, delicately arranged love-match between Sandra and Leonard might have been more dramatically engaging, as well as marginally more credible. Two Lovers surges inexorably towards an awful betrayal, before doing a handbrake turn into a happy ending. There are good, heartfelt performances here, but the credibility gap was too wide to be bridged.


The structure

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