From his combustible performance in The Believer to last year’s Half Nelson, the deceptive laziness in Ryan Gosling’s Brando-like eyes has been a force to admire. Behind those half shut lids, Gosling’s corneas are discreetly at work observing, calculating, and often times judging.
It’s those same eyes that kept me in a state of trepidation during Lars and the Real Girl, a whimsical comedy about how an entire town accommodates the titular character’s delusion that his “anatomically correct” doll is actually his real girlfriend. For the duration of this leap-of-faith plot, Gosling’s eyes were no longer working a character within the narrative of the film. They looked directly into my soul, snickering, calling me a sucker.
In Lars and the Real Girl, Gosling delivers one of his most memorably lazy performances and dares us to buy it, and we do. In fact, we go so far as to shower the fucker with praise—there was no shortage of Oscar talk in the washrooms directly after the screening.
It’s not that Gosling’s performance was lacking. In fact, the actor plays Lars as low-key as this obtuse role would allow him to. It’s just that in this drive-thru performance, Gosling does what so many Oscar winners of the past have done: he feigns a mental imbalance and lets everyone else bend over backwards to give him an award.
It’s fitting, considering that this is exactly what his character does: he gets it on with a life-size doll named Bianca and his entire town goes bonkers, giving her jobs, taking her to church, putting her to bed, and even allowing her to abuse the American Health Care System with repeat check-ups and ambulance calls (does she come with her own insurance plan?).
The burden of believability falls on the outstanding supporting characters, who share our reaction to Lars and Bianca. The standout is the constantly charming Emily Mortimer (Dear Frankie), whose name sadly went without mention in the post-screening washroom Oscar chats. Playing Lars’ pregnant sister-in-law, it is Mortimer’s performance that layers bewilderment beneath warmth, and brings this rather flexible mannequin—and an otherwise wooden movie—to life.
In this indie equivalent to a guilty pleasure, where folks like Mortimer do all the work, Gosling’s eyes crack wise as he steals all the credit.
Rating: VVV
