Two Lovers (2009) Critic Reviews

The storytelling here is at times as awkward as its hero, and since it is a Gray film Two Lovers takes itself dreadfully seriously. Yet it's one of the few movies I've seen recently that improves on a second viewing, in part because Phoenix does such remarkably subtle work.Read the full review

The whole movie is so well-cast and performed that we watch it unfolding without any particular awareness of "acting."Read the full review

James Gray's Two Lovers really is a '70s movie, in the mode of such raw, unfiltered character studies as "The Panic in Needle Park," "Wanda," and "Fat City."Read the full review

Themes of loneliness, alienation and unrequited love are not new, but there is always that sense of the unexpected in Phoenix that keeps you curious.Read the full review

In the movies, romantic love conquers all. In reality, it's a little different, and that's what Gray is trying to show.Read the full review

The film's secrets unfold slowly, allowing Phoenix and Paltrow -- a luminous fusion of grace and grit -- to build a relationship in full. The script, by Gray and Richard Menello, is inspired by Dostoevsky's "White Nights."Read the full review

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.Read the full review

Phoenix plays the romantic lead with great intelligence and enormous charm, making his character's conflict utterly believable, and Paltrow positively glows as the radiant shiksa who dazzles him.Read the full review

The flaws in Two Lovers are inseparable from its strengths. You could, I suppose, criticize the movie for being too sincere; too generous to its imperfect, self-deluded characters; too absorbed in their small crises and disproportionate reactions. But that criticism might sound a lot like praise.Read the full review