Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Claudio Carvalho After attempting to commit suicide jumping in the water, Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) gives up and returns to his parent´s apartment in Brooklyn. Leonard had a great disappointment with his fiancée and after a psychological treatment, he is not stable. During the night, he meets Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw) in a dinner party promoted by his family to the family of Michael Cohen (Bob Ari), who wants a partnership with his father in his dry cleaning business. Later Leonard meets his new neighbor Michelle Rausch (Gwyneth Paltrow) and he immediately feels attracted to her. Leonard and Sandra have a love affair with each other, and Sandra feels in love with him. But Leonard is in love with Michelle that is in love with her married lover Ronald Blatt (Elias Koteas) that does not leave his wife and children to stay with her. How will this quartet of unrequited loves end?"Two Lovers" is a pleasant romance slightly inspired in the novel "White Night" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow have great chemistry and magnificent performances and are the reason why "Two Lovers" works so well. The supporting cast with Isabella Rossellini and Vinessa Shaw among others great actors and actresses in another plus in this film. It is impressive how time goes by and now Isabella Rossellini performs the mother of Joaquin Phoenix´s character. The plot does not have any plot point or surprising development and indeed it is quite predictable, but "Two Lovers" is worthwhile watching. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Amantes" ("Lovers")

geneva notagain This movie is so great that it gets into my nerves. The platitudes of ordinary un-fancy people's romantic triangle in a lowbrow and diversified community in a cosmopolis seems to be so decrepit that we can name at least three different ways to deliver the story successfully but uneventfully:one with a bit of crime scenes and intergenerational vendetta; some with razor-sharp witticism in flirtatious conversations and some with troubled souls suffering varied mental illness like autism but eventually crush into just the right person that appreciate the beauty of the schizophrenic. James Gray dare to present us a pure love story, with damn certitude of the solidity of the performances, successfully created a marvel: use the simplest or even somewhat weak story to make the most beautifully genuine movie. Without Joaquin Phoenix's impeccable and almost celestial performances, the story will easily crush into banal derelict, but when the seemingly everyday storyline carried out by the most powerfully telegraphic performances, the power can be escalated to another extremity. IMO two lovers can easily overshadow a galaxy of widely acclaimed romantic movies by woody Allen.The soundtrack is impressive, when Leonard and Sandra first met in his boyhood room, the Spanish guitar's gentleness and inebriating sweetness easily drafted the audience into Leonard's heart. Interestingly, the same Spanish guitar was playing when he met Michelle in the middle of her crisis, two parallel woman tread on his heart gently and off- gaurdly. Every details depicted is romantically photographed and carefully calculated to make sure that every character has multiple layered personalities that can instantly connected by the audience. All the characters are in a way familiar with us and every move and gestures they made in the movie seem genuine to us. Leonard's awkwardness and his stilted efforts to look relaxed in a fancy restaurant and indisguisable happy smile after his first sex with Michelle, his faint but existing interest in Sandra, his uproarious and self-detonating love for Michelle, a girl apparently out of his league but daintily vulnerable with mesmerizing gravitas. The bursting eager to go away with Michelle that he can barely tear off the tape on the champagne case, the way he quietly take his coat and leave the tumultuous house full of celebrating crowd with agility and sky-high ecstasy. The dialogue can also easily divulge Leonard's heart, when Sandra sent him a pair of mitten, his response was straight, cruelly polite and collegial, its beyond reproach with some level of intimacy, but definitely not the kind of tone you'd expect from a obsessed lover. We can sense Sandra's tentativeness and despondency on her face, she's subconsciously aware of the fact that Leonard is not into her but shes constant trying. Her affection for Leonard is more of a maternal warmth, as a sharp contrast to Leonard's for Michelle, a flaming pursuit with unconditional gentleness and galvanized inspiration. He doesn't long for other's care, he wants to take care of Mitchelle, that's the plain hard fact existing in all urban lover triangle. This whole movie is totally a pretension-free,plus we get to see the Great Joaquin Phoenix' moves on a dance floor. What can't he do seriously, he can sing steady like a train and sharp like a razor and dance like he owns the place. Two lovers cannot go wrong simply because of Joaquin.

zee You'll see plenty of delusional thinking in this one.A 30-ish guy comes home to his family after a stint in the loony bin. He is suicidal, popping psychiatric meds, works in his dad's laundry (but fails at even that simple job) and is indulged in an "art" he's not very good at and that we never see him work at. He is inarticulate and self- pitying and still has a photo of his fiancé, now two years gone, by his bed. Into this pitiful life come two beautiful employed women who want him very much. Why? No story reason suggests itself. No one with any life experience would believe such women would. When he has sex with them, they have orgasms within 15 seconds or so, leading me to suspect the writer/director may have never had sex with an actual woman. (Or maybe the women are faking it to get rid of him more quickly, which would make some sense.)His parents never are anything less than 100% supportive, no matter how awful his behavior, which I you could argue explains how much of a loser he is, but I don't believe the script is that self-aware.I liked the set design, the score wasn't as manipulative as you might fear it would be considering the soap opera nature of the story, and the acting was fine. But the screenwriter's ideas about women are risible fantasies of an adolescent mind. I fully expect him to be writing movies in 50 years wherein hot 18 year old women are incredibly attracted to ugly 70 year old men, because we've seen that's what the puer aeternus does.

mailbob The central question of the film is: Who is Leonard? Is he a misfit, a social recluse forced by his illness to move back with his parents as an adult? Or, is he Mr. Cool, able to go dancing with Michelle and her friends, and effortlessly meet each social challenge? All we know is that once upon a time he was dumped by his fiancé. This is apparently enough to send him into the depths of depression, even suicide.We first meet Michelle literally fleeing from her screaming hysterical father with whom she lives, who is so threatening she must seek refuge in a stranger's (Leonard's) apartment. Yet we never once see or hear of the father again. Later we learn that her lover is paying for the apartment anyway, and when she breaks up him, she worries that he will stop paying the rent. What does her father have to do with anything? Did the writers forget he existed?Speaking of the writers, I can hear them thinking: "Here's an idea! Let's have Michelle ask Leonard to accompany her on a dinner date with her lover. Cool! Awkward situation!" She wants – nay, insists upon -- Leonard's opinion as to whether or not her lover is a good guy and really likes her. What is this, junior high school? We have been told that Michelle has been around the block, has dabbled in drugs, she's been a wild woman. Yet is she so juvenile that she invites another guy on her date to size up her lover? And how about her lover? The dinner is anything but awkward: He asks Leonard (in confidence and without a tinge of irony) to "keep an eye on her for me", as if he would have no clue that Leonard might just possibly be a rival. Duh! Apparently that thought never entered his head. Is there no end to Michelle's self-absorption? She is so eager to hear Leonard's opinion of her lover that she wakes him up the next morning at 6AM, summons him to the roof immediately, and demands he reveal his opinion. When he reluctantly renders his view that her lover is never going to leave his family (which later apparently turns out to be wrong – so much for Leonard's judgment), she instantly accepts this as irrefutable fact without question, even though Leonard had every selfish motive to see things that way, and she proceeds to fall apart. She immediately decides to break up with her lover. Apparently Leonard's analysis, coming from someone Michelle has just met and barely knows, carries such weight that she plans the rest of her life based on his opinion formed over one meeting at dinner. Is any part of this even half way believable? I kept watching in disbelief, thinking there has to be some point to all of this. In spite of this, I have to admit I kept watching the film straight through to the end. It is like passing a crash on a highway. No matter how hard you try, you can't avert your eyes.Michelle is completely self-centered, obtuse, has absolutely zero consideration for Leonard, and exploits him shamelessly. Yet he loves her anyway. Although stupid on Leonard's part, this is not completely unbelievable, because love is often irrational. Michelle obviously doesn't give a thought about him at all except how he affects her immediate needs. She of course she has no problem whatsoever having sex with him – damn the consequences. But Leonard is not the total innocent here. The situation with Leonard and Sandra is precisely the reverse. He is totally disinterested in her, she barely registers on his consciousness, and in fact, unbeknownst to her, he intends to dump her for Michelle. Of course the irony is that this is exactly what Michelle is about to do to Leonard, unbeknownst to him. Again, anyone with half a brain could spot this coming 10 miles away. This is a drama of settling for second-bests. Initially Michelle settles for Leonard since she believes her lover is unobtainable, so why not run off with him? But she changes on a dime once her lover swears he is leaving his family, and she instantly dumps Leonard, no matter that Leonard has protested everlasting love and who would do anything for her. Unfair? Sure. But Leonard is exactly the same. Thinking he is about to run off with Michelle, he intends to dump Sandra. But once he himself is dumped by Michelle, he settles for second-best Sandra. In the end, Michelle, her lover, and Sandra get the partner they want – only Leonard doesn't. But of all the characters, only Sandra has been constant and true throughout.The dialogue is shockingly amateurish. Example: "I have a surprise for you." "What is it?" "Well if I told you, then it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?" "Ha ha ha. Oh, you're so weird." Or how about this gem - Leonard to Michelle: "I love you. I do. More than anyone." Ah, the poetry sends chills up my spine. Again, junior high students can do better than this. I don't see the point or direction of this film. It doesn't seem to lead anywhere. The shocking question presented by the suicide attempt at the beginning of the film is left unanswered at the end. Is Leonard on the way back to mental health and recovery? He obviously has as much passion for Sandra as he has for his delivery job in his father's dry- cleaning establishment. She is a fallback solution only, neither good nor bad. Is this enough? Is he OK with this? Or will he plunge back into depression? Will he attempt suicide again? We simply don't know. For sheer soap opera interest, and for allowing us to watch Gwyneth Paltrow for a couple of hours, I'm giving this a generous 4.