Lost River (2015)

Such a frustrating disappointment

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Billy (Christina Hendricks) is the single mother of Bones (Iain De Caestecker) and Franky struggling in Detroit. Bones is salvaging from the abandoned buildings while avoiding local thug Bully (Matt Smith). Their home is going under with the mortgage. The banker Dave (Ben Mendelsohn) offers her a mystery job. Rat (Saoirse Ronan) is their melancholy neighbor living with her grandma. A crew is tearing down the abandoned homes and Billy is targeted. Billy takes the job which turns out to be a blood-splattering performance theater led by Cat (Eva Mendes). Bones finds a road running under the river.This has a magical fantasy sensibility surrounding this all-too-real crumbling America. It doesn't quite work. This is an indie that needs no name actors. The magical fantasy would play a lot better that way but this feels fake rather than surreal. It wants to be wildly inventive but it has no wonder. It has the potential to be darker but it takes too long to get there. That darkness needs to start sooner. This is slowly paced. It needs more drive in the narrative in the first half. The second half just gets weirder and weirder until I almost laughed at the dancing. I don't need it to make sense. I do need it to make me feel something other than dismissiveness.

Despite being a huge fan of the terrific actresses Ronan and Hendricks I just didn't like the movie. It's not as weird as David Lynch - there actually is a story and it moves along to a satisfying conclusion but I just didn't get the point of all of it. The ugly images and pseudo violence just seem meaningless. The ugly acts aren't funny and don't advance the plot like in a Tarantino film. Ryan Gosling wrote and directed this movie. He directs things fairly effectively but it's the story that is weak. He even got his girlfriend Eva Mendes to appear in this and she is kind of wasted. In fact the high caliber international cast is all wasted. Poor Detroit seems to be the setting of many a horror/thriller movie now.Even if you are a fan of the stars, don't bother watching this one. I though it was a waste of time.

Let's start by saying : I love this kind of films.OK, now that I say it, let's talk about the movie :it is the debut of Gosling as a director, and even when you can see clearly influences in his work, I will like to say that it have a character of it's own. I can only compare it with a mix between Tim Burton and David Lynch, two dark-film directors, but everyone with it's own style. The movie is an urban phantasmagorical fairy tale, a sad poetry of the suburbs and low life.I can't see something not perfect with this movie, it have a everything : perfect acting, perfect OST, perfect photography, deep characters. Only thing I did like to know more about the background of the characters, a bit more about their story, because I felt a lot of empathy with every one of them (even the twisted ones).I really want to see more Gosling's works, he have lot of potential as a director.(warning : this movie is not for everyone.)8,5/10

Ryan Gosling has worked before with of his greatest masters, Mr. Refn. With him, Gosling learned the importance of colors, movement and symbology of a film. With that in mind, Ryan made his first attempt as the Writer/Director of Lost River, a movie with a lot of images and colors to show, but it really is about nothing. Here, the director focuses a lot on showing allegories and symbols about the world and characters (e.g see how the reverse dynamic of blue-red colors/light works) but forgets to tell a cohesive and convincing story. In the end, the movie is all about Gosling trying to be the new Refn, but he fails to accomplish, since the latter at least knows how to tell a story.