Two Lovers (2008)

Released June 4, 2009

Two Lovers is an uncomfortably real depiction of love, lust and loneliness in contemporary Brooklyn. Joaquin Phoenix is stunning as Leonard, a drycleaner for his father’s business and part-time photographer. He’s battling bipolar disorder and becomes infatuated with his new neighbour, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose apartment lies across a Rear Window-esque courtyard in the building where he lives with his parents. He’s smitten of course, who wouldn’t be, but she’s having an affair with a married man and his parents are trying to hook him up with the lovely, but bland, Sandra (Vinessa Shaw).

Both Phoenix and Paltrow are outstanding. His is a performance where every line of dialogue is layered with internal meaning. We know what he’s thinking, but the other characters are oblivious. And she is perfectly cast: we believe her as the object of his obsession (he takes photos of her from his window) but also as someone who’s clearly a mess and stuck in a relationship she knows is doomed. Trapped in the gloomy and rainy streets, Leonard is torn between the two sides of his personality – the steady, and to his mind depressing, Sandra, and the manic Michelle.

Director James Gray, who also co-wrote the script, is able to convey emotional depth without using a sledgehammer, and seems intent on making us squirm at the uncomfortable rawness of it all. It ought to be a downer, but it isn’t. Like human behaviour, it is what it is: equally wonderful, sad and peculiar.

4.5/5