Movie Review: Two Lovers (2008)

Since being nominated for an Oscar for Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix has done a great job of baffling the public with increasingly odd behavior. His movie choices since his nomination have all been mediocre fare at best, and his attempt to become a bearded rapper have brought on speculation that he's gone certifiably insane. It's a shame that his (possibly) last movie role is Two Lovers, a bland indie drama that doesn't even come close to living up to the hype that it has garnered.

Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, a man who has just moved back in with his parents after becoming suicidal when his fiancee leaves him. He could be anywhere from his late twenties to his mid-thirties, but acts like he's fifteen. He's impulse, he mumbles almost all of his dialogue, and he has no real concern for the overarching effects of the decisions he makes.

Shortly after moving in, he meets both Sandra (Vanessa Shaw), the daughter of a family friend who likes Leonard from the first time she sees him, and Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), the new neighbor who's erratic behavior makes her character almost completely unlikeable...except, of course, to Leonard.

The story unfolds uncommonly slowly, and the characters are surprisingly one-dimensional for a drama of this magnitude. The characters' motivations are almost all completely selfish, and it's easy to wonder why Leonard continues to fall in love with Michelle when all she does is use him and play with his emotions. This is made even worse by almost insufferable performances from two of the leads (Phoenix and Paltrow).

Phoenix's performance is grating because of his constant mumbling. Every time he spoke, I wished there were subtitles on the screen to let me know what he said. Luckily, the dialogue is fairly sparse, and the long moments where very little happens allowed me to piece together what he said, and in the end I had a fairly good idea what was going on through most of the movie.

Paltrow's performance, however, was inexcusably bad. She seems bored, and her character comes off more annoying and manipulative than confused. Her voice rarely wavers from a dreary monotone, and she brings absolutely no life to the character. Leonard Kraditor might as well have fallen in love with a cardboard cutout. At least then it wouldn't have had any dialogue, and would've been just as believable as the situation we are actually presented with.

Two Lovers isn't all bad. Vanessa Shaw manages to deliver a good performance in her (very) limited screen time, and the story itself has some merits and good ideas, they're just drowned out by the utter stupidity of the two main characters, shattering the ability to actually connect with the characters directly, and unfortunately that is what lingers more than the few good moments that are found sprinkled throughout.

Rating: 5/10