Everyone Hates Ryan Gosling’s New Film
Lost River gets canned in Cannes.
Ryan Gosling’s much-anticipated directorial debut just premiered in Cannes, and sadly, pretty much everyone agrees that it’s a dud.
Lost River is the story of a single mum (played by Christina Hendricks) just trying to get ahead in the big city. In this instance, though, the big city is a grim, deserted Detroit, and getting ahead involves working at a freaky strip club, acting out violent sexual fantasies, and lying in a molded plastic coffin while clients, uh…you get the picture. There are also scavengers, flaming bicycles, and children tottering around in ruins. If you’re anything like me, you’re picturing Mad Max crossed with The Wire with some of the creepiest bits from Twin Peaks, which would be amazing, albeit quite traumatic. No such luck though, apparently.
Matt Risley described it as “a student film with an A-List cast”, while Peter Bradshaw though it was “often fantastically and unthinkingly offensive and at all times insufferably conceited. Wesley Morris wasn’t very nice about it, either. And here are some mean tweets:
Cannes so far lacks a film-maudit crapocalypse. LOST RIVER just supplied it. All Gosling’s pet Lynch films, filtered through Refnvision.
— Tim Robey (@trim_obey) May 20, 2014
Ryan Gosling’s directing debut: let’s see God forgive this…
— Jonathan Romney (@JonathanRomney) May 20, 2014
Lost River a cacophony of meaningless motifs stumbling round in service of a plot best summed up by “woman decides to move house”
— Jessica Kiang (@jessicakiang) May 20, 2014
It’s a bit much to expect an unproven debutant to have a fully-formed aesthetic ready to go, but the hope was that Gosling might be able to cobble together some of the best bits from the numerous esteemed directors that he has worked with — names like Ryan Fleck, Derek Cianfrance, Craig Gillespie, et al. Instead, it seems to borrow primarily from Nicolas Winding Refn — and not the good Nicolas Winding Refn from Drive, but from the bad Nicolas Winding Refn from 2013 Cannes bomb Only God Forgives, which, sadly, pretty much everyone agreed was a dud.
In other words, it’s liberally sprinkled with clichés, which is appropriate, because Lost River itself is one of the oldest clichés going around: golden boy actor directs nasty, gritty film to prove his artistic credibility.
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