Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River (2014), has always sat there beckoning me. When it came out, it received mixed to poor reviews and sort of disappeared. Yet it also looks like a Nicolas Winding Refn movie, who I am a fan of. After years of putting it off, I finally dove in. For the first half of Lost River, I could feel a goofy expression on my face reacting to how over-the-top its style was and the catalogue of neon-sign influences (Yes, NWR, but also Lynch, Malick, WKW, Herzog, etc etc etc). Gosling was really going for it here, everything but the kitchen sink, no doubt assisted by the gorgeous handiwork of cinematographer Benoît Debie (Climax, Beach Bum, Spring Breakers). Definitely an entry in the style-over-substance category as the actual story is quite thin and undercooked. We basically follow Bones (Iain De Caestecker, who resembles a young Gosling), the teenage son of Billy (Christina Hendricks whose gentleness shines) and they live in the outskirts of Detroit where houses are being demolished and they are behind on their mortgage payments. While Bones forages in the ruins for copper to strip and sell, he runs afoul of a volatile self-made street king, Bully (Matt Smith), Billy winds up working at a night-time club thanks to a sleazy banker and operator (Ben Mendelsohn). Gosling’s wife, Eva Mendes, also appears as one of the club’s performers; strange violent cabaret is performed on stage, even worse is offered to high rollers in the purple-lit basements below. While Mendlesohn and Smith are indulged too much into grotesque over-the-top carry-on, the quieter characters impress more, particularly Saoirse Ronan as a neighbour to Bone, and her star power shines through even in a thin supporting role. There’s some ghoulish violence worthy of a goth music video in the middle, but I became involved in the later half as the ghost town neo-noir predicaments escalate. On one hand, it’s a blunt post-GFC capitalistic nightmare (including the key metaphor of a sunken city), on the other hand, the dreamy fairytale stylings often feel like a superficial response to such urban decay and social poverty. Why not dig into more why Bully or the banker are the way there are, or incorporate better the spirit of a community into a narrative populated by archetypes (i.e. it would have been nice to see more of Far From Men’s Reda Kateb as a kindly taxi driver) Curious and showy, Lost River is a typical first time movie director overreach, but I still found it compelling despite its flaws. Atmospheric soundtrack by Johnny Jewel. Rented on iTunes. Recommended, maybe.
VHS Tracking 