Real Men and Real Girls
It's tempting to describe 2007's Lars and the Real Girl as the flip side of May. Instead of a mentally disturbed woman whose only friend is a real doll, it gives us a mentally unsettled man whose only friend is a real doll. (Actually the official name for the title character's inanimate companion is Real Girl but let's not get into that.)
The story could have gone into several different directions including the same dark way May went but instead it chooses to go in a lighter, more comic way. Though the doll of the title is anatomically correct, there is only one reference -- a subtle one, fortunately -- to this fact. Indeed, for a movie with so many perverse possibilities, Lars and the Real Girl is surprisingly conventional. Like May, it does have dark elements, but unlike May, the story concerns the title character's triumph over potential darkness, not his surrender to it.
Anyway, the movie concerns a shy young man named Lars who lives in a small town but never gets emotionally involved with anyone apart from his brother -- on whose property he lives -- and his sister-in-law. Shortly after his sister-in-law gets pregnant, Lars starts going crazy and orders a Real Girl through the mail. He calls his recent acquisition Bianca and starts treating it like a real person. He never uses the Real Girl for its intended purpose but he does talk about it as if it were real and as if it were an actual girlfriend.
His brother and sister-in-law are not sure how to respond to this so they consult the family doctor who advises them to go along with Lars' delusion. Eventually they talk the whole town into going along with Lars' delusion and Bianca starts to get a bit of a social life. Along the way, Lars get obsessed with what it takes to be a real man and then something happens and Lars is forced to confront something he has not wanted to confront...
It would be easy for me to wax cynical about this movie. After all, I spent several months in a small town in Michigan very similar to the town depicted in this movie and during that time, I was very lonely except for the weekends when I visited my relatives in Detroit. By all rights, I should be condemning this movie for its lack of realism. After all, people do not always rally around the well-deserving shy young person in real life and small town life is not always as friendly and heartwarming as it appears in movies like this.
But it says something about the subtlety of the script, the acting and the direction that I actually found myself won over by the movie despite all the myriad opportunities for me to go, “But that would never happen in real life.” And this from someone who usually rolls his eyes at feel-cute movies like Little Miss Sunshine.
Perhaps I gave Lars and the Real Girl a break because after seeing my share of cynical new movies, it felt good to finally see a modern movie which said, “Yes, I know it's a harsh world out there. But sometimes people can be a whole lot better than you give them credit for. Maybe not the people you know right now but the people you might someday meet in the future.”
In short, this flick is basically a modern-day Frank Capra movies for people who normally hate modern-day Frank Capra movies. And that is not a bad thing to be. Mind you, if they bring Bianca back for a sequel like Son of Lars and the Real Girl, I will not be quite so charitable.
It's tempting to describe 2007's Lars and the Real Girl as the flip side of May. Instead of a mentally disturbed woman whose only friend is a real doll, it gives us a mentally unsettled man whose only friend is a real doll. (Actually the official name for the title character's inanimate companion is Real Girl but let's not get into that.)
The story could have gone into several different directions including the same dark way May went but instead it chooses to go in a lighter, more comic way. Though the doll of the title is anatomically correct, there is only one reference -- a subtle one, fortunately -- to this fact. Indeed, for a movie with so many perverse possibilities, Lars and the Real Girl is surprisingly conventional. Like May, it does have dark elements, but unlike May, the story concerns the title character's triumph over potential darkness, not his surrender to it.
Anyway, the movie concerns a shy young man named Lars who lives in a small town but never gets emotionally involved with anyone apart from his brother -- on whose property he lives -- and his sister-in-law. Shortly after his sister-in-law gets pregnant, Lars starts going crazy and orders a Real Girl through the mail. He calls his recent acquisition Bianca and starts treating it like a real person. He never uses the Real Girl for its intended purpose but he does talk about it as if it were real and as if it were an actual girlfriend.
His brother and sister-in-law are not sure how to respond to this so they consult the family doctor who advises them to go along with Lars' delusion. Eventually they talk the whole town into going along with Lars' delusion and Bianca starts to get a bit of a social life. Along the way, Lars get obsessed with what it takes to be a real man and then something happens and Lars is forced to confront something he has not wanted to confront...
It would be easy for me to wax cynical about this movie. After all, I spent several months in a small town in Michigan very similar to the town depicted in this movie and during that time, I was very lonely except for the weekends when I visited my relatives in Detroit. By all rights, I should be condemning this movie for its lack of realism. After all, people do not always rally around the well-deserving shy young person in real life and small town life is not always as friendly and heartwarming as it appears in movies like this.
But it says something about the subtlety of the script, the acting and the direction that I actually found myself won over by the movie despite all the myriad opportunities for me to go, “But that would never happen in real life.” And this from someone who usually rolls his eyes at feel-cute movies like Little Miss Sunshine.
Perhaps I gave Lars and the Real Girl a break because after seeing my share of cynical new movies, it felt good to finally see a modern movie which said, “Yes, I know it's a harsh world out there. But sometimes people can be a whole lot better than you give them credit for. Maybe not the people you know right now but the people you might someday meet in the future.”
In short, this flick is basically a modern-day Frank Capra movies for people who normally hate modern-day Frank Capra movies. And that is not a bad thing to be. Mind you, if they bring Bianca back for a sequel like Son of Lars and the Real Girl, I will not be quite so charitable.
Labels: Frank Capra, Lars y la Chica Real, Míchigan, Películas Nuevas III
posted by Tonio Kruger at 7:58 PM
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