This is a wonderful film starring the brilliant Ryan Gosling as Lars Lindstrom, a social misfit who falls in love with a sex doll he buys on the internet. When the film opens Lars has been living in the garage of his brothers house ever since his father died, and we soon find out that his mother died while giving birth to Lars. They live in the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody and Lars' oddness is understood and he is well loved by the community. He goes to church and has a job but at night refuses to leave the garage and spends much of his time alone. Ryan Gosling put on 20lbs for this role and plays the part perfectly, not once did I feel anything other that great sorrow for his character when it would have been far to easy to dislike him and dismiss him as being just a weirdo.

One day though he announces to his brother Gus (played by Paul Schneider, The Assassination of Jesse James) and his wife Karin that he has a girlfriend and would like to bring her round for dinner. Of course his brother and sister-in-law are really excited and happy by this news and are eager to meet 'Bianca', of course it is when they meet her that the fun really starts. What follows is an often hilarious and often tear jerking story of how the whole town comes to accept Bianca into their lives and pulls out all the stops to help Lars cope with what is clearly very delusional behavior. In one instance the family doctor even invents a weekly treatment for low blood pressure that Bianca has in order to get Lars into her clinic once a week for a psychic assessment.

From a screenwriting angle there is a great method deployed here to show the passage of time (which is important as for this to work we really need to understand this all takes place over a fairly long period of time). Lars' sister-in-law starts the film looking slim but first time we meet Bianca she is obviously pregnant and her belly continues to grow larger over the course of the film. But this is rarely mentioned, it is as though her pregnancy is part of another story that we do not need to know about. I though it was very clever and while is probably not new it is the first time I have seen it wearing my 'writers hat'.

The film is brilliant, I was laughing and crying at the same time and really enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. I have read mixed reviews of this movie, I think it is clear that many reviewers never got the film at all, one respected reviewer even complained that it was a film about a sex doll that never had any sex! I do not know what film he was watching but he cannot have watched this very well because I was always of the opinion that Bianca while being introduced as Lars' girlfriend was actually always a way for Lars' to cope with the death of his mother so many years before, sex was never going to happen.

I highly recommend this movie, could well end up being my favorite of the year.


*P.S. I had never heard of this movie when I wrote "Fake Plastic Girls" Honestly!!

What a GREAT movie...sweet, touching and funny. Am very glad I finally saw this. With movies as artificial as Juno or There Will Be Blood becoming the darlings, it's nice to see a movie with actual emotion. A nice gentle movie.

I agree it was a great little film. I was astounded to see on a few "worst of 2007" lists (Michael Phillips). Gosling is amazing, and so is Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer. Hell, Patricia Clarkson and Kelli Garner too. It's genuinely touchy and often roaringly funny in an understated way.

I really enjoyed this movie. Ryan Gosling never disappoints and the supporting cast were pretty good such as Emily Mortimer, the doll's performance wasn't too bad either.

I've just watched this too (I know, better late than never). Have to agree with everyone else, really sweet film. Great performances all round but probably the script itself has to take the biggest plaudits.

Loved the line when someone hands Bianca plastic flowers. Lars says;

"They're not real, which means they'll last forever".

Have to try and find the script somewhere on the big old web.

I watched one of the little documentary things that comes on the special features with the dvd and they were talking about how Ryan Gosling made up and just sort of improvised a lot of what went on between him and Bianca.

As far as that line goes--probably scripted.  It would be interesting to see a shooting script.