Based loosely from Dostoevsky's "White Nights" yet probably will be more memorable as Joaquin Phoenix's last curtain call and the premature more of omnipotent actor of our generation; Two Lovers is the bittersweet entanglement between confused emotions of what contemporary culture defines as modern love story. Sadly, we are given evidence of his metamorphosis into a hip hop artist through the heartbroken character of Leonard, the Russian lit-morose and suicidal lover archetype who tactfully and blissfully throws a few raps, slapsticks and later on some slick dancing moves among other sweet painful rendering of devotion to win the heart of this tantalizing blond, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow as the M.I.L.F of our generation in real life) who prefers rejecting and using him for her obsessive affair with a married hotshot lawyer. The other lover, Sandra, not less tantalizing yet not so tucked up as Leonard and Michelle (this similarity makes him falling more into Michelle as Sandra into him paradoxically), is the daughter of the respective Cohen clan who about to absorb Leonard's parents' dry cleaning business into their chain and his life into the safety net of Russian Jewish middle class. Along the action of en tangling and distancing between these two love interests, Phoenix shows the hopelessness and inner fragility of a mad crush over an impossible love that paralyzes him in the wicked subtleties people around him have to afford the consequences just to make him happy. Paltrow plays crucial axis in turning the mood of the characters around her. Michelle is manipulatively powerful over Leonard without her really admitting it as she is focusing attending her own wound through one of the best shots conjured of the window scene when Leonard helpless voyeuring and talking to Michelle across the building. Even with standard dialogues and romantic catch phrases in the world of media exploited amour such as, "I want to take care of you" and the very magnum opus cliche of "I love you", you find them some sense of truism in this mundane landscape and come out of their mouths without regret, reverberate honesty and desperation to have, to love, and be loved you have not find in a while on screen. Without a strong casting and directing, the somber winter of Brighton, New York will not help much in saving the plot from becoming another soap opera subplot episode 210. As most love triangles end up in terrible tragedy, James Gray as director/cowriter/anything in between learns from his meticulous study on cinema history (the guy is believed to know the name of every director in every movie ever made), manages to make a graceful dance to come up with the beautiful notion of human redemption and practicality of love, most people end up vicariously relate with Leonard, the poor guy not so lucky in love.
