Gwyneth Paltrow Movie:

		List Price: $34.98		Label: Magnolia Home Entertainment Salesrank: 53330 Released: June 30, 2009
		Our Price: $18.00
		Used Price: $12.41
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
TWO LOVERS BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)

Description of Two Lovers [Blu-ray]:
Russian-American director James Gray (The Yards) has never made any secret of his affection for the Italian crime drama. That operatic influence permeated his first three features, but Two Lovers takes more cues from intimate French films and angst-ridden Russian fiction (specifically Dostoevsky's short story "White Nights"). Aspiring photographer Leonard (Gray regular Joaquin Phoenix) returns to Brooklyn after a failed relationship only to find himself torn between two paramours of opposing personalities. Sandra (Vinessa Shaw, 3:10 to Yuma) represents the safe choice, while Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, recalling her streetwise character in P.T. Anderson's Hard Eight) presents more of a challenge--she's a party girl in love with a married man--but Michelle excites him in ways the thoughtful and attentive Sandra, a drug-company rep, does not. Gray leaves it up to viewers to determine whether Leonard should factor religion into his decision; his supportive parents (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Monoshov) would love to see him pair up with the Jewish Sandra, but mostly they want their only son to be happy. If he joins his father--and Sandra's--in the dry-cleaning game, that would be a happy bonus (the men are working on a merger). Though Leonard's bipolar quirks threaten to derail the proceedings--it's hard to believe two beautiful women would gravitate towards such a socially awkward fellow--Two Lovers marks an improvement over Gray's previous movie, We Own the Night, and a welcome return to the picturesque Brighton Beach neighborhood of Little Odessa, his auspicious debut. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Two Lovers [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Well made drama, with great performances
2009-12-08 - An interesting drama about an imperfect love triangle. Joaquin Phoenix plays Leonard, a man perhaps in his early thirties, living in an apartment in Brooklyn with his parents, a Jewish couple who have a small dry cleaning operation where Leonard works. Leonard has a story behind him: an engagement with a girl was broken some years ago when they found that they were genetically incompatible, and he has tried to kill himself in the past, more than once. His parents, worried by him, try to set him up with Sandra, the nice daughter of a fellow (and apparently wealthier) Jewish businessman. Though not terribly enthusiastic about Sandra, he starts going out with her, who is very attracted to him (why a seemingly down to earth person like Sandra would be attracted to an obviously troubled person like Leonard is unclear, though I suppose things like this happen, though not very usually, in real life). But just when Leonard and Sandra start meeting and knowing each other, he meets Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, who is great), an impetuous, beautiful, but messed-up neighbor. Leonard falls for Michelle quickly, but soon realizes that she sees him basically as an asexual friend, and feels no sexual attraction whatsoever for him. In fact, Michelle has a relationship with a married man, and wants Leonard to go out with them in order to see if he would be willing to leave his family to her. A normal guy would realize there is no hope with her and tell her goodbye at this point, but Leonard is too smitten with Michelle to do so. And so, while his relationship with Sandra starts growing, so does his obsession with Michelle (who, while not really loving him, is constantly calling him for help). At the end, Leonard would have to make a choice between living with the nice Sandra, who loves him but is somewhat boring, and the unstable Michelle, who is gorgeous and fun to be with, but also very unstable, and if that wasn't enough, really doesn't love him, and would probably leave him soon if she would even agree to be with him. Not an awful dilemma for a well grounded person. One could argue with the resolution, assuming that Michelle is telling Leonard the truth (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD): men almost never leave their wives for their lovers, and especially unstable and emotionally immature women like Michelle. Still, these points aside, this is a solid, well-acted movie, which is never boring, and rings truthful most of the time.

Plan B of an emotional con artist?
2009-11-26 - Deliberate, dark, and subtlety suspenseful, this movie explores emotional vulnerability and immaturity. One tries to sympathize with the main character, Leonard (Phoenix), but we end up pitying Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). He's a failed adult, in part due to mental illness, but more owing to laziness and complacency and stunted emotional development.

The writing and acting of all involved especially Phoenix are remarkable. Rossellini as the over-protective and intrusive mother (? are we to believe she has a role in her son's neurosis) also delivers a subtle and consistent performance.
Gray adeptly captures the mood of Brighton Beach middle class.

As to the ending, based on Leonard's behavior and choices made throughout the movie - what we know of him- leads one to sense that returning to Sandra was nothing more than landing on a safety net after a daring but failed trapeze attempt. He tried making an impetuous break for it. It didn't work out. His options? Suicide, or pragmatically, not losing his investment in the ring by proposing to his "Plan B". He's the anti-hero to Hoffman in "The Graduate".



Every other 5-star review said it for me...
2009-10-26 - ... but I would just like to emphasize one thing - brilliantly, achingly, phenomenally, flawlessly acted. I cannot stress how much I was reeled into this movie. Paltrow and Phoenix really deliver. I strongly, strongly urge you to see this film. The end credits just rolled and I'm left wishing it weren't over.

haunting look into the human heart
2009-10-12 - It's a tricky enough business trying to juggle two relationships at the same time even under the best of circumstances. Now imagine trying to do so when your mental stability is already in question and your emotional state far from sound.

In "Two Lovers," Joaquin Phoenix plays a young man who suffers from suicidal depression. His condition has made it imperative that he move back in with his parents, an old world couple who live in a spacious apartment in Brighton Beach. Leonard's life turns even more complicated and stressful when he becomes involved with both an attractive friend of the family (whom the parents want him to hook up with) and a beautiful but seriously troubled neighbor he meets one day in the hall. The problem is that Leonard is really head-over-heels in love with the needy, self-absorbed and high maintenance Michelle (who is herself involved with a married man), and is really only using Sandra as a means of getting back at Michelle for not reciprocating his love.

Based on the Dostoevsky short story "White Nights" and the 1957 Visconti movie of the same name, the inexorably sad and moving "Two Lovers" takes place in a world in which the characters rarely talk above a whisper and from which all possibility of joy seems to have been drained away. The movie is almost achingly perceptive about how the human psyche actually works when it comes to affairs of the heart, acknowledging that we can control neither how we feel about others nor how others feel about us - though we certainly do expend a great deal of our energy and time trying! Leonard is not a "bad" guy at heart; he doesn't go out of his way to intentionally hurt others, but he's also not above deceiving himself into believing he's doing nothing wrong when he clearly is. Ditto for Michelle who's too focused on herself and her own needs and desires to much care how her actions are affecting others. And poor, trusting Sandra is the one who may wind up paying for that indifference in the end.

The tone of the film is restrained, subdued and wintry, with the screenplay (by James Gray and Richard Menello) and the direction (by Gray) astutely capturing the dreary emptiness of the characters' lives. Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw give heartbreakingly understated performances as the individuals involved in the messy triangle, as does Isabella Rossellini as Leonard's prying but devoted mother who always seems well attuned to the moods of her child.

Joaquin Phoenix has stated publicly that "Two Lovers" will be the last movie he ever makes as an actor. Let me just state right up front that, if that is indeed the case, it will be a tremendous loss both to the profession and to appreciators of fine acting everywhere.


Lying, lying, and lying for love.
2009-10-08 -
Every facet of this movie is brilliant, a tribute to the craft of moviemaking, all held together by a script so subtle and thoughtful that I am convinced that the mere reading of it would be more rewarding than viewing 90% of competing fare. It has a symmetry hinted at by the title, a play between earnest lies, and truth glibly told (in the pursuit of the ever elusive love) that follows its own internal logic to a tremendous end, and ending: Leonard (Phoenix) lies to Sandra (Shaw), and lets her down time and again, so that he may pursue Michelle (Paltrow), who lies to Leonard, and stands him up for her own hidden agenda. Big lies, small lies, lies of all shapes and sizes. So pervasive, and yet all so natural, that it made me realize, with a jolt, that this was getting dangerously real, uncomfortably close to the falsehoods with which we surround ourselves, especially in that which matters most to us.
Leonard pursues the image of Michelle to the end, willing to forsake all he knows to be true in the slim hope that she may yet prove to be true..taking us with him, against our better judgement, headlong, hoping, till the humbling truth is revealed.

Which is when Leonard is ready to receive the love truthfully and simply declared to him from the start. Does this mean that the furtive, intense grasping after an erotic fantasy is decried, and therefor healed by the two lovers locked in the awkward, public embrace with which we end? The answer is left dangling, for to us to decide. See it, and decide for youself. I, for one, prefer truth.

Bravo!!

Louis M