IF JOAQUIN PHOENIX REALLY IS DETERMINED TO GIVE UP ON ACTING FOR HIS NEW HIP-HOP CAREER (!), THIS INTENSE ROMANTIC DRAMA REPRESENTS A STRIKING SWANSONG.
Working for the third time for director James Gray — an association echoing the collaboration of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese — he’s in febrile form here as a troubled young man caught between two very different women. On the rebound from a breakdown, Phoenix’s protagonist Leonard Kraditor finds himself back living with his parents in Brighton Beach, where his dad is soon trying to pair him off with a business colleague’s daughter, Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). Despite the somewhat ‘arranged’ nature of their meeting, these two actually get on very well, but by this time Leonard is also distracted by his attractive neighbour Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, effectively cast against type), currently residing in a nearby apartment paid for by her wealthy married lover. Do either of these women offer Leonard the escape he craves, or will this love triangle prove his further undoing?
It’s a scenario which would so often be the stuff of comedy, but Gray approaches it with characteristic seriousness (the script was inspired by Dostoyevsky’s White Nights), examining the destructive romantic myth of the perfect fulfilment. Kindly Shaw wants to look after still-hurting Phoenix, whereas the seriously messed-up Paltrow by contrast stirs his own nurturing instincts, each providing what the other cannot. Effectively using a colour palette and camera placement to alternate between claustrophobic entrapment and airy release, Gray’s film stands as an imposing, deeply felt meditation on the ever mysterious ways of the heart. — Trevor Johnston.