A tender story about a guy and his life-sized anatomically correct sex doll. Try pitching that to a producer. Better yet, try making that film keeping it completely chaste. All right, now try having everyone in town treat the doll as if it was a real person and have it not come off as stupid. Amazingly, this is what Lars and the Real Girl manages to do.
Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is an extremely shy guy. At work, people speak to him and are friendly, and he can barely make eye contact with them or utter a few words. He lives in the separate garage of his old family home. His brother Gus (Paul Schneider) lives in the main house with his wife Karin (Emily Mortimer) who's expecting. They live in a small northern town. Aside from work and church it seems Lars sits alone in the dark. Karin can't even convince him to have meals with her and Gus and he hides from her when she knocks on his door.
A coworker shows Lars a website with sex dolls and 6 weeks later one is delivered to the garage. What's strange (well maybe not so strange) is that he doesn't want it for sex as much as for companionship. He introduces "Bianca" to Karin and Gus by inviting the two of them over for dinner. They are stunned, but at least it got him out to have dinner right? The next day they all go to the local doctor's (Patricia Clarkson) so that Bianca (wink wink) can get a checkup. The doctor's opinion is to let Lars play this out. Gus thinks his brother has gone crazy, but surprisingly the whole town is pretty accepting of Bianca as she starts attending church and parties with Lars.
As bizarre as all this sounds it works. Probably because of Ryan Gosling's amazing performance. He comes across as nice but incapable of communicating. You believe that that girl in the office would keep trying to talk with him. You also believe that he's so completely repressed that using the doll for its intended purpose is as beyond him, just as going postal would be. There are definite laughs in this film but for the most part, it's about people being nice to each other and a very shy guy starting to come out of his shell. I found it so believable that at one point, I thought Bianca was about to blink.
This is the director's, Craig Gillespie, debut year. He also directed Mr Woodcock with Billy Bob Thornton earlier this fall, but I don't even remember hearing about that. The writer, Nancy Oliver has written some Six Feet Under epsiodes but this is her first film. I hope they both do many more.
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