Carefully spaced family photographs line a wall of Leonard’s parent’s apartment. Tracing many generations of his traditional Italian family, they soon come to represent confinement. Ever present and looming in several of the film’s shots, the surveillant gazes of his lineage become a prison for Leonard, who desperately cries out for self-expression.
Played brilliantly by Joaquin Phoenix, Leonard is an introverted man living with his parents after a failed relationship and suicide. He is interested in black-and-white photography, but instead works in his father’s dry-cleaning store, a job he can’t stand. At this point of emotional turmoil, two very different women enter his life. Sandra’s parents are also in dry-cleaning, and soon she and Leonard enter a fragile yet comfortable relationship. However, Leonard soon falls in love with Michelle (Paltrow), a complicated, spunky blond courted by a married man who repeatedly makes empty promises to leave his wife.
To call Two Lovers a romantic drama diminishes the depth of this carefully crafted work. Although modest in scale, the emotions and themes that run through the film are intricate and demanding. Torn between his duty to his father and his desire to break free from society and truly live his life, Leonard is often anguished and unsure how to proceed. While Sandra is sweet, gentle and loved by his parents, Michelle is exciting, unpredictable and rebellious. Both women represent for him completely different possibilities, and no simple choices.
Two Lovers is not perfect. The camerawork is largely uninteresting, failing to add anything to the film beyond what is conveyed through the script and performances. The ending is predictable and wholly unsatisfying. And, throughout the movie there is always the sense that you’ve seen this story done many times before. But because of the way the material is handled, for the most part the film feels fresh and alive. The director does not shy away from his characters’ often frustrating imperfections. Instead, he forces us to accept them for who they are and to try to understand their inherent loneliness and isolation.
