Joaquin Phoenix has cemented his reputation as an actor who’s able to play deeply troubled and complex individuals but this, his last film before his retirement, is a shallow, stuttering drama which uses lazy metaphorical shortcuts and imagery in order to create a false impression of depth.
Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is a handsome man but he’s having a hard time of late. Since his fiancé left him, he now lives at home and works for his parents’ dry cleaning business. His well-meaning parents set him up with their business partner’s daughter and while she’s perfectly pleasant, she’s a little bit boring for his taste (Vinessa Shaw). He falls instead for his neighbour in the opposite flat, who’s beautiful but a little bit wild (Gwyneth Paltrow). And so this familiar set-up begins – will Leonard choose safety and stability or unpredictable insecurity?
It’s a simple and often tried plot which is let down further by the two dimensionality of its characters and incomplete histories that are barely hinted at, much less discussed. Leonard has bi-polar disorder; something which is mentioned but never explored. It seems to have been dropped into the film to generate a paltry amount of sympathy for an unlikable character. How do we know he’s a deep soul? He takes arty black and white photographs which are used as cinematic shorthand for creative depth.
The two women in his life are both equally flat. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Michelle, a beautiful but otherwise unremarkable woman who’s having an affair with a married man, who also happens to be her boss. It’s completely unclear why Leonard falls in love with her in the first place; she seems to simply exist to indulge his fantasies of escape from the drudgery of his own life. And he jumps from meeting her to being in love with her so quickly that it’s hard to invest any kind of empathy with either of them.
Vinessa Shaw plays Sandra, an attractive if bland woman who shows her affections with practical gifts like gloves and utters lines like “I want to take care of you”. Shaw does the best with what she’s given but she doesn’t have enough screen time to justify her character’s unlikely affections – a photo montage of the two of them at her brother’s Bar Mitzvah is the only evidence of their closeness.
Leonard bounces between the two women, picking Sandra up when he’s rebuffed by Michelle and shrugging off Sandra’s affections when Michelle is interested, but the picture of him we’re given is so fickle and unreliable that it’s hard to have anything but pity for the one he will choose in the end.
Two Lovers attempts to evoke a pathos and understanding with Phoenix’s character but the cardboard characterisation, ham-fisted cinematic shorthand and maudlin lead make it very difficult to have anything other than frustration for a film which could have seen Phoenix’s career end with a bang instead of a weak sigh.
Extras ***
Director’s commentary
James Gray clearly has great passion for his subject and explains how Joaquin Phoenix’s involvement was crucial to the production of the film (having worked together on We Own The Night).
Deleted scenes
Three deleted scenes expand on Leonard’s relationship with his parents and include a worrying scene where he stalks Michelle to her hotel room in the Waldorf Astoria. It’s easy to see why this later scene was removed as it’s quite long and is disjointed from the main narrative.
Two Lovers (15) is out on DVD August 10
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