I finally caught up with Lars and the Real Girl (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) last night. What a fun, quirky movie, directed by Craig Gillespie, and highlighted by yet another brave performance by Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson), who probably deserves to be back at the Oscars for a second year in a row. Realistically, both the film and Gosling are likely to earn Golden Globe nods in their respective Musical or Comedy categories, but will probably come up short with the more 'serious'-minded Academy. My bigger concern is that most people will shy away from the film once they hear its basic premise, which means they'll be missing out on something special. All I can say is don't judge a book by its cover...

Gosling plays a sweet but troubled 27 year old who has shut himself off from the rest of the world to the greatest degree possible. He goes to work, but comes home (the garage adjacent to the home occupied by his brother and pregnant sister-in-law) and doesn't want to have anything to do with other people—that is, until a special woman, Bianca, comes into his life and helps him to open up. None of this sounds all that odd until you consider the fact that Bianca is not a real human being, but a life-size doll.

While this may sound somewhat silly, it is never a joke to Gosling or his wonderful co-stars Emily Mortimer (Match Point) and Paul Schneider (The Assassination of Jesse James). This is not to say there aren't a great many laughs for the audience about the absurdity of some of the situations that arise as a result of this atypical relationship—there are—but rather that the actors play their hands beautifully. (Trivia, per IMDB.com: To help Gosling stay in character, Bianca was treated like an actual person even in-between scenes, just as she is in the film—for instance, she was dressed privately in her own trailer, and was only present for scenes that she was in.)

Watching Lars, I was reminded of the wonderful film Harvey (1950), in which Jimmy Stewart gives his greatest performance as a perfectly nice, respectable man whose best friend just happens to be a six-foot tall rabbit named Harvey that nobody else, including his older sister (Josephine Hull) and her daughter (Peggy Dow), can see. From what I understand, there is nothing harder for an actor than having to act opposite nothing, since there is nothing to play off of, emotionally or physically. Bianca was no more of an acting partner than Harvey, so the fact that he pulled it off speaks volumes about Gosling's abilities. (I was not surprised to learn that Gosling loves Harvey and drew upon Stewart's perofrmance for his own.)

I must admit I had completely misjudged Gosling as just another disposable pretty boy after the enjoyable but fluffy The Notebook (2004), and then started to really buy into him with Half Nelson (2006), and now I'm totally sold: he is the real deal, a torch-carrier of Brando-esque intensity and naturalism, and deserves to be regarded as one of the best actors of his generation.