Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)

[Antoine Doinel]

The international trailer for Joaquin Phoenix's "last film" has arrived. Looks promising.

[Oedipax]

Much to my surprise and delight, I stumbled across Two Lovers which is currently playing via On Demand in HD! The downside is it costs $10.99, at least on my cable provider. I checked out the IMDB boards and apparently the film is also screening on HDNet Movies on February 11th, a couple days before its (limited?) theatrical release. I might just wait and DVR it then. Seeing as We Own the Night was one of my huge discoveries this past year, it's mighty tempting to watch it now.

[TomReagan]

I genuinely enjoyed both The Yards and We Own the Night, so I'll have to have a look.

Plus, I noticed that today's The Sun newspaper (online edition) had some caps featuring Paltrow and her left breast, including an exposed areola.

Apparently, there was much rejoicing.

[domino harvey]

The British certainly know how to deliver breaking nudes

[FerdinandGriffon]

Managed to catch this here in Paris, where it's been out for a while, long enough at least to make the Reader's top 10 in Cahiers for 2008. At first it was a pleasant suprise, gorgeously shot and textured, with a somewhat jarring but eventually satisfying performance from Pheonix. But at certain points I felt Antonioni's influence a little too strongly. Now, a week and much mulling later, I would even go so far as to call it a pretty, but ultimately unneccesary, retread. The Italian's presence is felt everywhere, in the development of the characters, the mood and pacing, the dialogue, the ending, the way Gray's camera interacts with architecture. It's basically an update of L'avventura with a male lead and occasional Wong Kar Wai glossiness. A scene on a roof with church bells ringing in the background confirmed this for me.
It's an enjoyable film, well acted, and pleasant to look at, but it's nothing special. Still, I am now curious about Gray's other work, none of which I've seen.

[Antoine Doinel]

New trailer.

[John Cope]

A surprisingly strong interview from the kids at AintItCool.

I especially liked this:

Gray:The inspiration was actually Fellini: specifically NIGHTS OF CABIRIA and LA STRADA. I'm not saying [TWO LOVERS] is as good as those. Those are the greatest things ever. Fellini is my favorite filmmaker. I have no problem with, and in fact love, some of the films that are ironic or postmodern or have certain narrative twists. Some of them are beautiful. But everybody's doing it. And I have a contrarian bone in me: if everybody's doing this, I want to do this. So I had decided that I would make something... I love that you called it "peculiar". I was trying to do something "specific". The only ambition was authentic emotion - which doesn't mean "realistic", of course. "Authentic emotion" just means that the actors are committed to the characters they're playing and not condescending to them. And in a way, it is a very anti-art comment. Some people today view art as something you view at a museum under glass. What I like is when a picture or a movie or a painting or any work of art makes you feel uncomfortable. And I was hoping for some moments of intimacy with Joaquin, where it was almost unpleasant to watch him fumble and reveal himself emotionally.
That was the ambition. And Fellini is not quite Neorealism. He's actually a little bit post-Neorealist, you know? Which doesn't mean I don't have admiration for [Neorealism]: Roberto Rossellini is maybe the greatest director ever. But I was trying for something that was a slightly heightened reality in a way, a little bit more... "poetic" I guess you could call it? To deal with emotions directly. You're from Ain't It Cool, you said?
Beaks: Yeah.
Gray: I must say look at the site from time to time, but not that often. And I must say that this is in someways the anti-fanboy movie. So I'm sure there will be a lot of hate on the boards for it because there's nothing to latch on to that's... clever, I guess.
Beaks: Well, I think that applies not just to our website, but to most twentysomething and thirtysomething people today. There's this need to fall back on "snark" and on "quirky".
Gray: You're completely right. You're more right than you know. When I show the film to older audiences, almost always I find that they get it. And when I showed the film at USC about two weeks ago, they seemed to like it but they had a very different reaction. (Without getting into specifics, Gray talks about how the younger audience laughed at a key emotional moment at the very end of the film.) And I thought, "What is it with you guys? Why are you so afraid of embracing what is part of life, which is disappointment and melancholy? Why are you so distanced from art - if I may use that word - that it's all a big fucking joke?" I don't understand that. What is that? And I thought maybe... if there were a draft and they had to go to war, maybe the presence of danger would bring back a sense of longing. Longing, for example! It seems to me that it's a generation totally not attuned to the idea of longing. They think it's bullshit. Now, I could be the idiot! Maybe they have it right! They live a happier life; they don't have that sense of longing that I'm talking about. And that's a better way of living. So maybe they are more advanced in their thinking. But I'm not that old. I'm thirty-nine years old, so I should be in tune with it. But I don't feel like I am, and I don't know why that is. Maybe you can tell me, because I don't know.

[jojo]

Phoenix was on Letterman last night and participated in a very, very, odd interview. Now, I don't doubt that he's an odd guy to begin with, but this seemed a little much. The entertainment presses are already billing it as an "an interview memorable for all the wrong reasons" but I think it's possible that Phoenix was playing a joke (and playfully promoting the movie in a creative way), and Letterman was in on it.

For those of you who've seen the film already, can you confirm any connection between how he presented himself on Letterman last night and the film itself?

[domino harvey]

Phoenix pretended to quit acting a few months ago and has taken up a new career as a rapper. Casey Affleck has been filming a "documentary" on his career change. Last night was just another piece of performance art

[Barmy]

This film looks watchable, despite Paltrow. Agreed that the MSM is stupidly falling for his performance art. We don't need two Crispin Glovers. (Or even one, frankly.)

[GoldenPilgrim]

Agreed that the MSM is stupidly falling for his performance art.

Absolutely. It is so painfully obvious too; I wish Casey wasn't going down with the ship.

Alas, it's a discussion for a different thread. But I think it's important for everyone to get their "I told you so's" prepared before "the big reveal."

[thirtyframesasecond]

I've not seen any of Gray's previous films but apparently he's very much rated by the French critics. His last three films have all competed at Cannes. The trailer makes for ominous viewing. It doesn't get a UK release until the end of March but it gives me a chance to see some of Gray's other films - what shouldn't I miss?

[John Cope]

See them all. In order if you can. They are all superb and they make for a fascinating charted development of a genuine auteur sensibility.

[Oedipax]

Oddly I've seen them as out of order as possible, ping-ponging from We Own the Night to The Yards then Two Lovers and finally Little Odessa. It didn't harm my opinion of Gray as a filmmaker, thankfully. I hope the film's doing better business than it might've otherwise on account of Joaquin's Letterman interview this week - although I'm not sure what audiences primarily motivated by the spectacle of a supposed career meltdown will make of it. It's a very funny yet painful, melancholy kind of film that hit pretty close to home (I'm sure anyone posting on this forum has heard "Wow, you have a lot of DVDs!" before in addition to the more serious I-can't-be-with-you heart-rending stuff).

[Barmy]

I thought this was just OK. A good first hour (other than the cliched opening scene), but then it goes off the rails. Simplistic reviewers are calling this plotless and "70s-film-like". But if anything it's too plotty. The attractions between the characters are just flatly presented because there's too much stuff going on to quietly observe them. The subplot (if you want to call it that) about the drycleaning business (a metaphor (or synecdoche) for summat, no doubt) is just distracting.

Phoenix is good albeit a bit tic-y.

Shaw is awesome, as always--her best role since The Hills Have Eyes.

Rossellini is ill-used.

[Antoine Doinel]

Did you sleep through any of it?

[tavernier]

And how was Ms. Paltry?

[Barmy]

Gwyneth Paltrow appears in the film.

[domino harvey]

Gwyneth Paltrow appears in the film.

Would make for a brilliant pull-quote

[Barmy]

I'm hoping for "Shaw's best role since The Hills Have Eyes!!!"

[John Cope]

Though Two Lovers doesn't pack the emotional whallop of Gray's previous features it clearly isn't meant to. Still, the tone of the picture takes a little adjusting to. It is primarily quiet and small scale in its depictions, rarely going in for the operatic intensity of even the similarly pitched Little Odessa (though there is still opera here). What's remarkable about it is its sustained, sensitive consideration of the emotional nuances, not the details of the plot. If the plot seems overly complicated it is only so as to give appropriate background to the main character's psychic distress, the weight he feels upon him. It all slowly filters in and alternately unsettles and touches us with Gray's customary sincerity. It's certainly of a piece aesthetically with the rest of his films and that deepens its resonance as it implies the extension of a coherent and comprehensive world view.

Gray takes a real risk I think with sculpting his central character out of such tentative, tenuous material. There were moments throughout in which I was actually troubled by the nagging sense that, in fact, this wasn't the right approach after all and yet this is not the kind of detail that could simply be called misjudged. The entire picture is built around the conception of Leonard that Gray and Phoenix have developed. I guess my concerns had to do with the fact that Leonard is so obviously socially maladjusted from the start, for whatever reason, that the character's deck, as-it-were, is perilously stacked. I was surprised, for instance, that we are meant, apparently, to take his explanation for the loss of his fiancee seriously; I really assumed it was a cover story he had half-convinced himself of. It felt to me as though, rather than simply being a heavily laden melodramatic archetype, Leonard swung close to be over determined as a character. This is a very fine line admittedly but the notion persisted for me throughout. Finally, though, I think the risk pays off because neither Gray or Phoenix reduce Leonard to his tics and quirks; we are never even sure how far his psychological imbalance reaches and to what extent it impedes upon his life. This ambiguity allows us to reflect on his passion, longing and devotion, sharing in it and considering the relevance of its "irrationality".

Phoenix is certainly the principle figure here and maybe that too made me wary; wary that everyone else was being given short shrift, used as perfunctory decor for the psychic stage of his mind. Everyone else, even Gwyneth really, have adjusted the temperament of their performances to accommodate or complement his. But this is not in the end a diminishment; it is a very purposeful move, challenging them and Gray to find a tone that will make this material resonate, give it gravity.

And there is very real subtlety here. The image of Elias Koteas, as Michelle's wealthy lover, gently touching her face in a gesture of familiar affection (and it's the familiarity that matters) is so effective because it disrupts a somewhat static series of formal compositions with an image much more abstract, even caught on the fly. It disrupts our engagement then as it does Leonard's own, observing across the restaurant table. If the film is about "two lovers" at all it is in the way that a series of partnerships can be permanently effected by the disposition of one partner. Phoenix does not overwork the quirks of an unstable personality but rather allows them to seep into his bearing and being, to dictate his mode of behavior throughout, which fluctuates from ecstatic highs to the crumbling frailty of ego collapse. His declaration of love to Michelle, "I'm fucked up too!" is great because it's simultaneously moving and honest and unafraid of the unavoidable comedy of the situation. If Gray's tone was just an inch or so off it would simply be pathetic.

I've noticed how many have made the point that Leonard's disinclination toward Shaw's Sandra and his attraction to Gwyneth's Michelle is an illustration of a certain kind of Jewish self-hatred, or, at the least, a willful act of resisting the parameters of ethnic identity. A superficial reading supports that but it simply doesn't go far enough to cover Gray's purposes. Leonard acts out against or consistently resists any conception of a future that could be stable. The events detailing Leonard's family emphasize a communal life very much centered around social gatherings and giving prominence to holidays and inherited traditions (it's no accident that the wall of extensive, heavily fetishized family portraits provides a prominent backdrop throughout).

Michelle's character is much more isolated and in that way too reflects Leonard's psychic state. She also allows him to approach a lifestyle of fancy restaurants and opera appreciation, etc. This stuff is set up as her own self imposed identity, conceived in isolation, reacting to her own unstable and untenable situation. The key though is that she is, in effect, a kept woman; her access too is limited by association--in her case with the wealthy man she is secretly (or not so secretly) seeing. He makes this vision or conception of life, limited as it inherently is, possible for her and we never see it lived in any way other than indulgence as an abstract. It doesn't determine her life. What does is the small, dingy apartment Koteas pays for. This is her real station and identity; not just dissolute but unstable.

There's a beautiful moment that accentuates the connection between Michelle and Leonard. It's a moment of great performance really. During the hospital scene, when Leonard is informed of Michelle's condition he reacts in the most perfect possible way. It's just the look on his face but instead of being angry or shocked as most would play it, Phoenix instead gives us an expression closer to embarrassment; embarrassment for her and himself as someone who relates to her poor decisions and understands them all too well. He is, indeed, fucked up too.

The wealth of the downtown is not what turns Leonard on anyway; it's the club scene that's important, shot with the kind of unique vigor that Gray always brings to his nightclub scenes. And this is important because the access Michelle allows Leonard (and here as well her own access is limited by her youth and vitality) is privileged but also acts as a release; he is, for a brief time anyway, capable of a non-self conscious moment.

As this picture wound down I kept thinking that it would make a fascinating double feature with Revolutionary Road: both about the smallness of lives disrupted and troubled by an appeal to potentially non-existent possibilities for change and growth; the latter pitched in the camp of hysterical melodrama, the former more restrained, ultimately taking the route of a more directly recognizable and muted acquiescence, despite the psychic imbalance driving its main character. And contrary to Barmy's earlier declaration, the last half does not go off the rails. This is most especially clear in the final image which makes one realize that it's in the ambiguity of that moment that the film has its entire reason for being.

[domino harvey]

Gwyneth Paltrow asks her pals Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Jon Favreau, Sofia Coppola, and James Gray to give her some DVD suggestions

[Cde.]

I would never, ever have picked Wes Anderson as an Eva fan.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Gwyneth Paltrow asks her pals Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Jon Favreau, Sofia Coppola, and James Gray to give her some DVD suggestions

Paltrow is a "wanker" like all Americans who start to speak "British" ("When it comes to knowledge of film history, I’m semi-rubbish"). God I hate her even more than Audrey Hepburn.

As for Wes: What a bullshit artist: "I’d never heard of [From the Life of Marionettes] until last month." Uh-huh, sure.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Saw this today and I really liked it. A serious and mature, but sombre melodrama about choices and consequences, family and the sacrifices made. Phoenix is every bit as good as has been suggested as the bipolar Leonard, all mumbles and tics. What Gray succeeds in doing is making you sympathise with the matchmaking parents and the married but adulterous Ronald as much as Leonard and the two women in his life. The parents may have a business merger in mind but genuinely want to see Leonard happy, Ronald is genuinely concerned about Michelle's welfare. The constant blue-gray colour palette and ending that forces Leonard into compromise makes this feel unremittingly morose, but it's certainly a powerful, character-driven piece of work. One hopes Phoenix's recent change of career is a piss-take as it almost appears to be, as otherwise we've lost a very good actor indeed.