By Linda Winsh-Bolard
In a small town a man, who spent most of is life emotionally alienated, purchases a “life like sex doll” on the Internet and introduces her as Bianca, his girlfriend, who arrived from Brazil, to his brother Gus and his wife Karin.
Quite naturally Gus and Karin panic. With remarkable restrain Karin makes Gus to treat Bianca and Lars as a couple, serving them food, giving Bianca a room and talking to Lars as if he was able to translate whatever Bianca has to say, while suggesting a visit to the local doctor, whose combined degrees includes psychology, ostensibly to check Bianca out after stressful flight.
Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson) is very wise and effective doctor. Bianca, who is wheelchair bound(dolls don't walk), undergoes series of treatments for unspecified illness and, while she is recuperating in the office, Dagmar “talks” to Lars in the next room.
Slowly the trauma that resulted in his delusion unravels freeing him to be more natural with living people, not just their effigies.
Dagmar had also explained to Gus and Karin that to Lars Bianca is real and they cannot change it. They present the situation to town. Slowly Bianca wins over the people. From the church to the school board, Bianca is welcomed everywhere and everybody, even when Lars is not present, behaves as if she was a person.
No, they did not go bonkers, nor does the doll miraculously become a woman.
It starts with Mrs. Gruner (Nancy Beatty) overcoming the objections of a sanctimonious churchgoer to Lars’ bringing the doll to services (She is a gold calf! Eh? Different bible?) by pointing out the oddities of other church members, and continues with the town’s people finding, while believing themselves to be helping a strange lone man, relief of their own problems using the silent doll as the mirror they can talk to about anything.
There is a touching scene when the town women consider a new haircut for Bianca. Discussing styles, trying for the most flattering one, they seem to have forgotten that Bianca cannot care, until the moment when the hairdresser says: because there is no going back, is there?, meaning the hair will not grow back. It's not about the doll, it's about them doing their best.
When we were children we played with dolls and projected ourselves and our dreams onto them; for a short period of time the town’s people experience the same.
The film avoids any smudges of smut; it also sidesteps any cheapness, lasciviousness or mockery. It works as well as it does because it sincerely shows pains of disassociation that we all know to some degree.
It also works out because Gosling is capable of contained, restrained,internally strong acting that never goes overboard and his portrait of the troubled man looking to fit in is natural and believable.
There are of course, logistical problems: Bianca is a custom-made sex doll; Lars’ idea of women is physical, not psychological. He is unwilling and unable to connect with people on emotional level, because of fear or disinterest, and it is unlikely that such longstanding deficiency will dramatically change. Whatever had caused the emotional withdrawal, Lars is not far removed from the Japanese businessmen who purchase these dolls because they find real women too difficult: real women want to talk, to get to know one another, to be treated with respect, kindness and dignity, they talk, touch and leave. Dolls, extension of porn, silently obey. It is no accident that strong paternal societies are repressive, oppressive and cruel. One wonders about the connection between our own accolades to male alpha, lack of social net and growing application of torture in the name of protection. Open your closets, gentlemen?
Small towns naturally push people into relationships as an insurance against communal responsibility for an individual. Couples will take care of one another, have kids, then the kids will take over and the society need not to spend time and resources on providing for its individual members. The pervasive loneliness exhibited by the singles in the film is unnatural and sad considering how awful are many of the marriages in constricted small towns.
It is also possible that some communities might collaborate to help, but it is unlikely to happen, and if might happen anywhere then possibly in a small, tight community of a large city. After all, the town was not there for Lars’s Dad.
As for small towns keeping doctors of Dagmar's caliber (Clarkson is excellent) that’ s truly a Hollywood’s dream.
Shot in Ontario, Canada, mostly during the winter, it nicely shows the desolation of the place, the smallness and restriction of choice, the necessity of acceptance and dread of submarine disease.
Directed by Craig Gillespie, written by Nancy Oliver, Cast:Lars: Ryan Gosling
Karin: Emily Mortimer,Gus: Paul Schneider,Dagmar: Patricia Clarkson, Margo: Kelli Garner, Holly: Lauren Ash, Mrs. Gruner: Nancy Beatty
SKE/MGM presentation
