The Counterlife
by Giampaolo Bianconi
(One of my entries in the Best of 2008 discussion.)
Two Lovers, dir James Gray (2008)
At a time when films get progressively more expensive and more explosive, the pleasure in the films of James Gray comes from their smallness. His films are crafted with care and subtlety as opposed to largesse and glossiness. Two Lovers is no exception: it is an intimate story fused with place and the visible power of actors in the hands of an intelligent director. Early on, there’s a moment that demonstrates Gray’s simultaneous mastery and quietude as a director: Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) and Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) sit in his bedroom. She explains that she’d wanted to meet him, and, between cuts, Gray moves the camera slightly, placing Sandra dead center. The fiber of the scene is reconstructed from a standard shot reverse shot to an almost confessional cinematic moment; it is dramatic without being saccharine. All in all, it is indicative of a simplicity and intelligence that makes the film great.
At its core, Two Lovers is an escape fantasy. We all dream of a life that runs counter to our life. These are distant fantasies whose very implausibility forms the basis of radical possibility: to shed the weight of our own history and placeness. Leonard seems to be in his thirties, he’s bipolar, he lives with his parents. He had a fiancé once, was in law school—but things seems to have fallen apart. His parents set him up with Sandra, a neighborhood brunette with a thick accent. (His gentle, caring mother, played by Isabella Rossellini, is one of the film’s high water marks.) At the same time, he meets Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), an apparently free-spirited blonde who “moves around a lot” and is involved in a long-term affair with a wealthy Manhattan lawyer who has yet to leave his wife.
Leonard’s family’s apartment faces Michelle’s across a courtyard. Though they can see each other from their windows they communicate mostly by text message. Leonard spends most of the film leading distinct lives with the two women: he dines with Michelle and her married boyfriend, playing her admiring best friend, then leaves to screw Sandra in his bedroom. His clear desire for Michelle is matched only by his seemingly levelheaded interest in Sandra. Sandra, both families seems to know, is Leonard’s destiny. Leonard keeps his friendship with Michelle a secret, and when the opportunity presents itself, he announces his love—they have sex on the roof of their building uncomfortably, keeping their heavy parkas on. They make plans to run away to San Francisco, talking on the phone and staring through their windows at one another, across the concrete chasm. She reveals her breast to him and kisses the glass—their closest moment a hundred feet away, infinitely more comfortable than their awkward lovemaking.
Gray’s camera never resorts to moralism or builds up a false sense of illicit suspense between the girlfriend he likes and the friend he desires. Instead, Gray allows us to bear witness to Leonard’s contradictions, his person in its complex wholeness: you almost forget he’s a character in a film. Phoenix is awkward, yet noticeably in control of every minute movement, smile, and loud breath. Under Gray’s direction, Paltrow too delivers a moving and honest performance. Ultimately, Gray knows that the weight of place and history is too heavy to be escaped; Leonard and Michelle never run off to San Francisco, and the film ends as the lightness of his counterlife vanishes. We are unable to transform the narrative in which we live. Deviation is only a dream.