Two Lovers

I’m not going to spend much time at all on this one, but I do want to mention one thing: I’m not the only one who thought that the only good thing about this movie was when Gwyneth Paltrow gave Joaquin Phoenix a peek at her breast toward the end of the movie. I was actually thinking of mentioning that in the tweet for this movie on the Keystone Playlist, but decided against it; then I pulled up its metacritic page to link to it for the playlist, and I zipped to the bottom, to see what its lowest score was. That low number was 38, from Kyle Smith at the New York Post; and the blurb from his review that metacritic linked to reads, “The only possible interest the movie will inspire in anyone comes when Paltrow flashes a breast toward the end, far too late to pump any excitement into an aggressively boring film that gurgles with self-indulgence.”

This is almost true. Certainly it is the sexiest, prettiest bit of what is otherwise a sour, ugly movie; but it’s not the only point of interest. There is a space of time in the film, toward the end, during which Leonard (Phoenix) makes preparations to go on a trip, in order to make a drastic, impetuous change in his life. In those moments, Phoenix lights up and brings some real energy to his character - the only time there is really any kind of energy at all in the movie - and for a couple of minutes, you think that it has the potential to end reasonably well, in spite of all the horrific missteps that have come in the first seventy to eighty minutes. This does not come to pass, however; in fact, the ending might be the worst one I have ever seen in a movie.