KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson
Director: Craig Gillespie
Running time: 106 mins
Rating: M (sexual references)
Screening: Lido, Rialto
Verdict: A charmingly improbable and delicately emotionally nuanced Capraesque fable about the healing power of love.
It's easy to mock as a rose-tinted view of an America Americans wish they lived in, but this indie sleeper is a Capraesque fable that you either get or you don't.
I got it, because - its few implausibilities and predictable ending aside - it is distinguished by an effortless command of tone that makes it one of the most emotionally nuanced films in some time.
Gosling, brilliant as the inspirational crackhead teacher in Half Nelson, plays Lars Lindstrom, who lives in a nameless small town with his brother Gus (Schneider) and sister-in-law Karin (Mortimer). Lars' pathological shyness probably places him somewhere on the autistic spectrum. It certainly makes him resistant to Karin's repeated dinner invitations and the approaches of a workmate Margo (Garner), who senses in him a gentle kindred spirit.
The film is possibly best approached cold, but it gives almost nothing away to identify the other title character, whom Lars brings to dinner one evening.
"This is Bianca," he tells a gobsmacked Karin and Gus, as he presents a life-size, anatomically correct silicone doll. "She's not from around here."
That's something of an understatement: Bianca, Lars alleges, is a Brazilian-Danish ex-missionary whose inertness may be ascribed to her paraplegia. Gus' faintly disgusted reaction to Lars' "fiancee in a box" portends disaster but when he drags Lars off to the local doctor (Clarkson), events take a surprising turn.
The reaction of the small community to Lars' very public delusion may strain belief but the film is part of a noble storytelling tradition in which a slightly loopy character opens up everyone's access to love.
Writer Nancy Oliver, who penned seven episodes of TV's Six Feet Under, has created a spare, delicate script in which every line counts. Her characters emerge as accretions of small gestures and their stories come only slowly into focus.
If there's a fault - and it's perhaps in the final edit - it's that the film hints at a back-story for Gus and Karin that it never delivers on. However, it remains a deeply satisfying and enjoyable film about the healing power of love.
