In recent years, the romantic drama-comedy genre has seemed stuck in a rut. Sure, there are shimmers of hope from the raunchier dude-approved offerings of the Judd Apatow camp (Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, etc.) or Woody Allen’s excellent Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but for the most part it’s formulaic dullsville.
Mercifully, writer and director James Grey is here to change all that, with his dark, daring and thought-provoking new film, Two Lovers. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw as the three members of a tempestuous triangle, it flies far outside the typical Hollywood comfort zone by baring its characters’ true-to-life flaws, insecurities and erratic behaviours. As he explains, it was partially inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights.
“What I did was I read his story, which I loved, because it felt like it had the same kind of melancholy and sincerity as the film I was writing,” Gray says. “White Nights is wonderful because the main character is slightly mad, and I feel like that’s a perfect way to put it about us. When we’re in love, we’re all mad, and our neuroses are right there in front of us. That’s the reason why it lends itself so well to comedies, because our behaviour becomes so out-sized and preposterous. You call the woman and you hang up, and other infantile things like that. It’s hilarious, but it also seems somewhat haunted.”
From the outset, Two Lovers may seem like quite the departure from Gray’s three previous crime thrillers — Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own The Night. Yet with its tense pacing, atmosphere of empty moments between action and emphasis on getting under the skin of its characters, he argues that it’s not that different at all.
“It’s interesting, because you make the same movie over and over again, and yet you don’t,” says Gray. “You want to vary it just enough so that it’s new ground, but also strive to stay true to the themes that make it personal for you.”
Following in the great tradition of filmmakers continually casting their muses (Martin Scorsese with Robert DeNiro, Akira Kurosawa with Toshirō Mifune, Allen with Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, ScarJo, etc.), Two Lovers marks the third film Gray has made with Phoenix. Sounding almost in awe, he describes his star as “brilliant,” “a true artist” and “really alive.”
“He has such an intensity, and an emotional intelligence, and it’s a real relief when you get to work with someone like that,” Gray says. “Emotional intelligence is one of the most underrated forms of human intellect there is. We also have the same taste, and we view the world in a very similar way, so why wouldn’t I want to work with someone like that over and over again?”
As such, Phoenix’s recent retirement from acting to devote himself to a career in hip hop is a topic that Gray is eager to weigh in on. However, with the news that Casey Affleck is now set to direct an upcoming documentary about the actor turned rapper’s mentoring from Diddy, it’s starting to sound more and more like a carefully orchestrated sham.
“For my own selfish reasons, I certainly hope it’s a hoax,” laughs Grey. “But who the heck knows? Joaquin definitely marches to the beat of his own drum.”
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