Release Date: Feb. 13
Director: James Gray
Writers: James Gray and Ric Menello
Cinematographer: Marco Onorato
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Isabella Rossellini, John Ortiz
Studio/Run Time: Magnolia Pictures, 110 mins.
When Two Lovers
begins, Leonard Kraditor’s (Joaquin Phoenix) parents are entering a business
relationship with the Cohen family, which his parents see as an opportunity to
rekindle his interest in love and life.Leonard’s last relationship ended disastrously, which left him heartbroken
and suicidal.Except while he easily
charms his way into Sandra Cohen’s (Vinessa Shaw) heart, he finds himself
falling for the more exciting neighbor down the hall, Michelle (Gwyneth
Paltrow).It becomes a love triangle,
with Leonard’s heart working against his head and the well being of his
family.
The plot is pure melodrama, but writer-director James Gray
does does his best to avoid drifting down the easy road of sentimentality.A lot of this comes from the tightness of the script.Its slow twists and turns feel
alarmingly real, without ever having any pure feel-good scenes.The audience goes from an unpleasant love
scene to an unpleasant family scene, with no easy answer as to whether Leonard’s
making the right decisions.Two Lovers builds to an earned,
climactic ending that can be read as horrifying or lovely, but has a complexity
that denies reduction into typical happy/sad ending.
The other aspect that keeps Two Lovers’ clichés from overwhelming the film is its nuanced
performances.Phoenix’s mumbling,
working-class charm works doubt into his boasts and creates a figure believably
stuck between a rock and a hard place.His and the rest of the cast’s age also adds a wistful sense to the
film.If the same story was unfolding
for college students, the film would be trifling, but between the cast’s
somewhat weathered performances and unsettling cinematography, Gray creates the
sense that this is perhaps the last chance at love or families for everyone in the
film.
From this deceptively simple plot, then, Gray’s film becomes
something far more fascinating and intimate than a mere summary can
supply.Mature melodramas like this have
been out of fashion for years, in fact, perhaps always, which is why so often it’s
necessary to seek out foreign films for this kind of story done right. Two Lovers isn’t a particularly grand
gesture, but in the tradition of John Cassavetes and Woody Allen, its stakes are
personal yet universally human.