Two Lovers (2009)

Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) tries to kill himself and is rescued from drowning. He is depressed after breaking up with his fiancée for genetic reason. His parents (Isabella Rossellini, Moni Moshonov) set him up with their business partner's shy daughter Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw). He's moved back in with his parents and working at their Brooklyn dry cleaners. He falls for neighbor Michelle Rausch (Gwyneth Paltrow) and starts pursuing her. She is wild, unattainable, and having an affair with her married co-worker Ronald Blatt (Elias Koteas).It could be better if Leonard is more appealing. Michelle toys with him like a sad little boy. It's definitely a more adult love triangle where it's not only about lust and obsession. It's also calculations, deceptions, and settling. It's complicated. I would have preferred a simpler nerdy Leonard out of his league with the impossibly beautiful Michelle. Instead, he's a sad and slightly unstable guy. This is interesting but not necessarily crowd pleasing.

There is absolutely no one to root for in this film, not even the girl who is supposedly in love with suicidal Leonard. You have to wonder what in the world is wrong with her to put up with the treatment that results from the senseless pickle her boyfriend has gotten himself into. It's frustrating to watch a film in which depression, stupidity, and ignorance are treated with so little insight. I walked away from the movie thinking that all the characters deserved a swift kick in the pants. Pathetic people behaving badly does not an artful film make. And there is not a funny or witty line uttered. Oh, there was one moment of sense in the film, although I am sure we were supposed to snicker cynically when the good girlfriend says she likes movies and Leonard asks her to name one; she says, "The Sound of Music." Too bad she didn't go watch it instead of taking up with loser Leonard.

a film about choices. and sense of search for the best answer to a deep crisis.a picture. about love and escape from yourself. good performance. a great Joaquin Phoenix role. and something else. because the air, the dark images, the crumbs of silence in middle of dialogs are the best parts of movie. and the beautiful work of Phoenix is the wise manner to use it.it is not an original subject and it has not the value of part from common series. story of a solitude in search of answers, slices from a gray existence, it is a story about hope and the solution who makes you part of a link. a reflection film. and almost a parable.

The primary male character, Leonard, played by Joaquin Phoenix is uninteresting and portrayed as a complete loser. That two intelligent, attractive women would show the slightest interest in such a hopeless loser is just unbelievable. Are we really meant to believe that these two women would fall head over heels for a grown man who is an idle assistant in his family's dry cleaning business and lives at home? Both at work and at his parent's home he behaves like a spoilt child. When I got to the scene here he is a car with three women on their way for a night out and I watched and listened to interminable singing and juvenile behaviour, I decided enough. If this film had more depth later on, then I wasn't prepared to watch the tedium to get there. What were these fine actors doing in something this bad? This film is tedious, unconvincing garbage.