I hope you like cringing for two hours…

Every once in awhile your fanboy or fangirl side takes the reigns. And if you have friends who have similar interests, sometimes they are the reigns. My friend Torrey Kurtzner shares my love of all things Ryan Gosling; he recommended that I watch the 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl. I am not sure yet if I loved or hated the film – because for the entirety of the film I was cringing.

Lars and the Real Girl deals with the main character Lars’ (Ryan Gosling) social isolation. His friends and family try to break the ice, but his response is not one you would expect. We get a love story like no other – he purchases a RealDoll, a life-size sex doll manufactured by Abyss Creations,and develops a bizarre relationship with it. Everyone, friends, family, and eventually the entire town must adapt their lives around Lars and Bianca’s (the doll) relationship. If you like trainwrecks, buckle up.

When I say that people adapt their lives around Lars and Bianca’s relationship, I must stress that I really mean it. Not only is Bianca a sex doll – she is a wheelchair-bound sex doll. His friends and family all accommodate her disability. They accommodate a doll. They wash her, they bring her to doctors appointments, they dress her, and so on.

Enough of the plot, I am sure you are sold already. There is a lot to like in the film. The music, by David Torn, is simultaneously light hearted and appropriately mellow. The dialogue is amazing, with ad-libs by Ryan Gosling that add even more tension and awkwardness to the scenes. While the movie was a commercial failure, it would never have even gotten anywhere without Ryan Gosling’s performance.

This leads us to a theory that now is solidifying nicely among myself and friends. Ryan Gosling is, for all intents and purposes, playing the same character in almost every single film he is the lead in. He plays a soft-spoken, socially awkward, and private person. While I have not seen every single film he is the lead in (yet), it would seem each of his films show a progression of character development where he gains more social skills throughout the film(s) and adapts more to the world around him.

This sounds like a joke, and maybe it is, but fuck it. Ryan Gosling’s character in Lars goes on to be the driver in Drive. After Drive, he runs away to Thailand and we pick up his life story in Only God Forgives. For more information on this asinine theory, see mine and Torrey’s split-review of Drive and Only God Forgives in Trailer Talk Podcast episode five.

Back to Lars, though. The movie is strange, that much is certain. The plot sounds ridiculous and maybe it is. But the film is trying to get us to communicate more with one another, and help each other overcome our social anxieties and worries. At some level we all have some commonplace with Lars, even if we do not go so far as to order a fully-articulate sex doll to be our pretend girlfriend.

If you like films that someone may describe as “quirky” then look no further. If you are interested in our bizarre fan-theory, this is a must watch film. Lars and the Real Girl is not a particularly powerful film, and is not for the feint of heart. You will cringe, you will want to look away, and you will probably cover your face and sigh more than a few times when you are watching the movie. But maybe, just maybe, the film is presenting us with this awkward and terrible situation in efforts to get us to talk more to one another.

Dammit, Lars.

3/5 Ryan Gosling’s looking despondently at normal human beings