Review of Lars and the Real Girl (2007) by Spencer S — 14 Apr 2013

This is a sly and yet oh so whimsical film about love, loneliness, and the human condition. At its heart it's about one person's long journey from secluded loner to acknowledged friend. The premise surrounds Lars, a man who basically gives up the house he inherited to his brother and his pregnant wife to start their family and goes and lives out in the back shed.

He is quiet, contemplative, and obviously mournful of his parents, especially his mother who died when he was young. He is reclusive, and somewhat antisocial, but it's obvious that his family cares about him, that his co-worker likes him, and that he is not ready to advance in the world with so much grief stored up.

Enter Bianca, who Lars christens as his girlfriend, and who he brings everywhere with him. The catch is that Bianca is a sex doll, one that is very expensive at that, and Lars follows the delusion that she is real by insisting that she is paraplegic, unable to dress herself or really take care of herself.

He goes through the delusion, and everyone around him has to indulge in order for him to move on with his life, including his entire church, his family, and friends and co-workers. The film remains quirky the entire way through, but it is very heartbreaking.

As he begins to go through the stages towards acceptance he begins to lose interest in his polyurethane friend and invents barriers between the two of them. As the film unfurls you realize the depths of his own awkward isolation.

Not only that but because of his lingering adoration for an inanimate object, and the emotional impact attached to it, everyone around him slowly realizes just how deep and scarred he really is, and that makes everyone adore him all the more.

The relationships that are built from his attachment to the doll are really the most important aspect of the film as a whole. Besides being quite off-beat, this film tells a lot about grieving, and a lot about how we deal with the extreme losses in our lives.