Two Lovers DVD
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rossellini
Dir: James Gray
Rating: 2/5
James Gray is perhaps best known for working inside the crime genre with the likes of The Yard and We Own the Night under his belt but he looks at the ways of the heart in his new movie Two Lovers.
The movie reunites him with actor Joaquin Phoenix, this is the third time the pair have collaborated, and this is also, if we believe what he says, to be the last movie from Phoenix as he goes off to concentrate on his par career.
Set against the grey winter backdrop of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the story centres on Leonard Kraditor (Phoenix), a depressed and sometimes suicidal bachelor trying to pick up the pieces of his life after a bad breakup.
Living with his parents and helping out at the family dry-cleaning business, Leonard finds himself in an existence that, save for his dabbling in black-and-white photography, is ordinary and stifling.
His parents, mother Ruth (Rossellini) and father Reuben (Moshonov), hope that a merger with a lucrative business--run by a friend of Reuben’s with a pretty daughter, Sandra (Shaw)--will spark a budding romance in Leonard.
But their plan hits a snag when Leonard befriends Michelle (Paltrow), an alluring but emotionally needy blonde who struggles with her own desire for validation from a married man with whom she is having an affair.
Well unfortunately this isn't Phoenix bowing out of acting with a bang more with a quiet whimper as Two Lovers struggles to engage the audience.
While there is nothing particularly wrong with the movie it's just not that memorable, although it is a nice underplayed version of the Hollywood romance which does come as a nice change.
While Phoenix, Paltrow and co all turn in decent enough performances but it's the plot that just plods along that's unable to pack any real punch.
It's an honest movie that highlights the frustration of love and desire and the minefield that are relationships as they all try to understand the meaning of love and happiness.
At the beginning Two Lovers looks like it's going to be a complex movie that tackles depression and the complexity of the choices that are put before our central characters but in the end it all becomes a little too straight forward which is disappointing.
If Phoenix is leaving movie then the industry will be a sorrier place without him as he has delivered some fine performances over the years, it's such a shame that this final movie didn't demonstrate the talent that we will all miss.
Two Lovers is out on DVD now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Joaquin Phoenix