lars and the real girl

There are favorites, and then there are favorites. Books or movies we always come back to. For me, it’s Flannery O’Connor and Chekhov. It’s Beautiful Girls. And it’s Lars.

There’s nothing I can say about Lars and the Real Girl that can do it proper credit. The screenplay, by Nancy Oliver, is magnificent. And Ryan Gosling is just so perfect you forget he’s perfect. You forget he’s anything, other than Lars. And that’s a big deal for me. I get lost in a great many books, but very few films. It’s rare that I manage to suspend reality long enough to believe that what I see really is. Gosling lets me do it every time.