Whatever Floats Your Plastic Doll
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The opportunity to overcome the farcical premise of a sex doll playing a leading role in a serious emotional drama has made Craig Gillespie’s “Lars and the Real Girl” one of the fall’s most anticipated films. And Ryan Gosling’s empathetic performance as the confused young man who loves her is sure to win many fans for the film, even if its message of acceptance at all costs has its limitations.
Lars Lindstrom (Mr. Gosling) is an introverted 27-year-old whose inability to cope with life inspires a delusion that his newly purchased, anatomically correct blow-up doll is the real, live girl of his dreams. His antisocial tics begin to melt away as soon as he introduces Bianca to his brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), and Gus’s wife, Karin (Emily Mortimer). The couple, encouraged by their doctor and psychologist, Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), decide to indulge his fantasy and convince their friends and acquaintances to play along as well.
The film’s gentle treatment of the relationship and its reverence for Lars’s emotions give the positive response of the community a solemn poignancy. “Lars and the Real Girl” travels quickly through mockery of the eccentric and settles on tolerance and the acceptance of loved ones. But about halfway through the film, I started to wonder if an entire town accepting a blow-up doll as an emotionally disturbed young man’s girlfriend was an accomplishment or evidence that friends who don’t tell you you’re in a bad relationship until it’s over are not good friends. With a few slight plot tweaks, this could be a different genre film entirely.
But watching the intimate and reverent way that Lars treats Bianca, the townspeople shift from overlooking the 120-pound sex doll in the room to welcoming her as a new addition to their lives. Lars has introduced her as a shy, Brazilian-Dutch missionary whose poor health prevents her from walking on her own. Soon friends arrive at the house to tote Bianca and her wheelchair to hospital volunteer work, church group meetings, and children’s room readings.
Somewhere between tolerating a friend’s eccentricities and attending a funeral for a sex doll, acceptance becomes pathological. The film’s implication that affection should trump intervention in delicate situations is fraught with pitfalls. But the nuances of Nancy Oliver’s script and overall excellence of the cast make this detail easy to table. Ms. Oliver studs the script with a handful of casually inspiring pieces of dialogue, including a moving, impromptu laundry room speech between Gus and Lars about what it means to be a man.
Mr. Gosling is sure to win some nominations for his performance in the lead role. His flawless interpretation strikes exactly the right tone to sweep the audience past the absurdity of the plot directly into the heart of the story. The admiration and affection that Bianca inspires in his character is infectious, and spreads from Lars through the other characters and off the screen into the audience.
Ms. Mortimer and Mr. Schneider master the dichotomy of a couple dealing with disaster on the cusp of the birth of their first child, and Ms. Clarkson effortlessly embodies the wizened local doctor coaching her patients. It’s easy to see how an entire town could befriend a sex doll when Ms. Clarkson, in a doctor’s coat, gives them the orders, even though she sometimes seems more like a fairy godmother than a medical professional.
The main misstep in the on-screen relationships is with Kelli Garner, who plays Lars’s co-worker, Margo. Margo falls for the sweet loner and continues to develop that crush after meeting his silicon significant other. As difficult as it must be to pull off a love affair between your leading man and an inanimate object, the motivations of this often cloyingly sweet girl don’t make much sense. And her continued presence in the final scenes gives the film a few extra shoves into the realm of farce — though with Mr. Gosling in the role of damaged loner, it’s easy to see how a woman could momentarily displace her sense of reality.
Ms. Oliver’s strange premise allows for moments of earnestness that would overwhelm a more traditional plotline. But I can’t overcome a certain dread of the film’s tacit approval of unfortunate behavior. If I ever show up at a coworker’s party traipsing a blowup doll around as my love interest, please, somebody tell me.