I was touched by the idea of Lars and the Real Girl when I heard about its premise. MJC described it to me as a movie with Ryan Gosling about a man who falls in love with a Real Doll and believes she is real so his community supports him so they wont break his heart that she isn't. I knew I loved the film when members of Lars' small town went so far as to elect Bianca to the school board and take her to volunteer at the children's hospital.
Right off the bat, it sounded like one of those creepy, pretty indie movies that always make me feel warm and charmed when I walk out of the theatre so long as I avoid answering the sometimes disturbing subtext I went along with during the movie. Often, these types of movies are about the deep loneliness of our modern communities - devoid of face-to-face interactions and replaced with the Internet (and really all the reasons people don't connect anymore) The characters in them struggling to get involved or at least not to melt into irrelevance. I think so many writers are driven by what outrages them. After all: anger, disgust, frustration, these are the energies that raise your blood pressure. I remember as a young girl, thinking that everyone would think I was so mean and angry if they read my diary after discovering me dead. All I ever put on the pages was the rage I could not keep inside about a teacher or a parent or a boy who had made me sad. This is the first thing I read of when I read the following review on Slate for Lars and the Real Girl.
http://www.slate.com/id/2175719/
In Me and You and Everyone We Know, A 6 year old boy falls in love with an adult woman on the Internet and they are emailing about how they care so much for each other that they would poop into each others butts. The child then draws an image with two arrows facing opposite direction and says something about pooping back and forth forever. This idea was nothing less than charming with a teeny aura of strange if left alone - which it should be. The moment an adult tries to dissect the line, typed by a child, it becomes creepy and pornographic and abusive. But that is why the line is spoken by a child.
I was offended by the Slate review I read on Lars because for Christ sake - don't get mad just to get mad. I think the woman the wrote it takes her role as critic too literally and maybe feeling a bit lost, decided to dissect as an adult, the hot-button issues that could offend the Midwest. Not nearly for a moment does Lars come across as a sexual deviant because in his undescribed mental illness, which is never fully explained - he has the mind of a child. There are a million and one references during the film to the challenging childhood he endured that suggest his mind is simply stuck in a simpler time when things for him made sense.
Thus, his relationship with Bianca is not one of an adult perv with a mail order bride but rather one of a sophomoric child developing into a man for the first time.
I knew a little about what the movie was about and had a passive interest in Real Dolls. Let's face it, like their much more widely accepted, pint-sized counter part, Barbie - they are intriguing. But if you suspend your disbelief and come along for the ride with this beautiful movie, the overarching themes of loneliness in a crowd, wounds from childhood, family and a community pulling together to support one of its own make you float out of the theater with a smile on your face.
www.citypaper.com/
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