Tuesday Night is Film Night has rolled around yet again and this week for our potentially momentous magical movie moment, we have the strange looking story of;
Lars and the Real Girl
My word, what a strange film!
Ryan Gosling stars in this bittersweet, melancholic, romantic, strange tale of love and delusion. Gosling is Lars Lindstrom a young small town man, who lives in the garage of the house, which he half owns with his brother; Gus. Gus (Paul Schneider) lives in the house with his newly pregnant wife Karin (Emily Mortimer). Lars is a shy and retiring character, who seems to be retreating into his shell more and more, until he finds a girlfriend.
Unfortunately, Lars' new girlfriend is a plastic, mail-order "love doll".
Let us just take a moment to take that all in.
That is the premise of the story, Lars becomes a delusional individual who comes to terms with his life by inventing a girlfriend, although the invention is not in his mind, she is real, plastic and came delivered in a large crate.
Gus and Karin are clearly perturbed by this creation, as Lars is convinced that Bianca (for that is her name) is real. The only way to get Lars to see a doctor is to take Bianca as the patient and this triggers off the bizarre notion that to treat Lars' issue, the people around him need to believe as well, that Bianca is real. And so, that is what happens. The whole town starts to play along with the fact that Bianca is real, but they only do this for Lars and to help him.
There are some more layers to story, which fill in some detail and background, but the basic story is just that; Lars and his "real girl".
I believe there are two sides to this story, or certainly two ways to look at the plot. You either go along with it or you simply dismiss totally as complete and utter drivel. It very much depends on how you dissect the story, if you are very matter of fact about it, then you can discard it as a whimsical tale with no real credibility. If however, you look at it as a way of examining mental illness, then there is a whole new aspect to it.
You can very easily dismiss mental illness as just that; an illness and not accept or understand the delusions that the person, in this case Lars, displays, but what if everybody accepted that although this is clearly not what we would class as the norm, it is normal for Lars, so let us be sympathetic to his problems and go along with it. How would that make him feel, how would he react, how would he cope, if what is clearly an inanimate object, is suddenly accepted as reality?
And this is what happens, although Bianca cannot walk or talk, she is included in the community and through Lars she lives her normal existence.
It is a totally bizarre film. It is funny, purely for the basic premise of trying to bring to life a plastic doll. However, it is also sad, as you see how the relationships between Lars and Bianca and Lars and his family change. You get this strange juxtaposition between reality and fantasy. For what is reality for Lars, is a fantasy for others, but this story turns that notion around. It certainly makes you think.
However unique though it is and although Ryan Gosling, Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer are superb acting their individual roles, it is a film you will either love or ignore. Taking it at base level, it is a dire film based on a bizarre notion. If you read into it a lot more you can get sucked into the different perceptions and try to psychoanalyse the plot and the characters and how sympathetic handling of an unfortunate illness can pay dividends in the long run.
The jury is out on this one.
TNiFN Rating: 43%
IMDB Link
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