Two Lovers

James Gray is halfway interesting as a writer-director, and his latest film is halfway interesting too. A filmmaker’s dependence on other films can be a plus or a minus, but I found it a distraction here, like a parlor game. Yep, there’s Rear Window and there’s Vertigo. The outer borough view of Manhattan as a distant fantasyland seems lifted from Saturday Night Fever. But the whole story is virtually a remake of the Israeli film, Late Marriage, going so far as to import the actor who plays the central character’s father. Joaquin Phoenix does carry the film in what purports to be his last acting role, as a young man trying to recover from a bout of mental illness, with the good luck to be caught between two women, Gwyneth Paltrow as the amazing shiksa who appears on his doorstep in Brighton Beach and Vinessa Shaw as the plainly beautiful Jewish girl who has been arranged for him, to seal the merger of their fathers’ dry cleaning chains. All these characters seem authentic in their behavior, believably poignant and pathetic, and earnestly romantic. The supporting players definitely add flavor, with Isabella Rossellini as an improbable but convincing Jewish mother and Elias Koteas as the suave Manhattan lawyer with whom Joaquin must vie for the attentions of Gwyneth. But the sense of real people and real emotions is undermined by the quotation marks around many scenes, and the conclusion suffers from comparison to the exquisitely wrought coda to Late Marriage. Maybe I would have liked it better without the baggage of constant reference to other films, but perhaps that wouldn’t be an impediment to your enjoyment. (2008, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-74)