Lars Lindstrom lives a secluded life in a small northern town. His mother died when he was born, causing his grief-stricken father to have been a distant parent to Lars and his older brother, Gus. Gus carries guilt for having left the desperate family situation as soon as he could support himself; Lars struggles with the loss of his mother during his birth and an irrational fear about the risk of death during childbirth. As a result, he exhibits avoidance behaviors and haphephobia, causing social awkwardness and isolation.
Having inherited the family home after their father's death, the two brothers both live on the property along with Gus' wife, Karin. Lars lives in the converted garage, while Gus and Karin, who is pregnant with their first child, live in the house proper. Despite Karin's efforts to bring Lars out of his shell, interacting with or relating to his family and co-workers is very difficult for him. A colleague at his office, Margo, also tries to engage him, but Lars is impervious to Margo's attempts to be friendly.
One evening, Lars happily announces to Gus and Karin that he has a visitor whom he met online, a wheelchair-mobile missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent named Bianca. The pair are startled to discover that Bianca is actually a lifelike doll, ordered from an adult website, whom Lars treats as a live human being. Concerned about his mental health, Gus and Karin convince Lars to take Bianca to see the family doctor, Dagmar Berman, who is also a psychologist. Berman diagnoses Bianca with low blood pressure and urges Lars to return under the guise of "weekly treatments" for Bianca, while actually analyzing Lars to get to the root of his behavior. Berman explains to Gus and Karin that Lars' delusion is a manifestation of an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, and that they need to assist with Lars' therapy by continuing to treat Bianca as if she were real. During this time, Margo has begun to date another co-worker, which silently bothers Lars.
Eventually, Lars introduces Bianca as his girlfriend to his co-workers and various townspeople. Sympathetic to Lars, the town inhabitants react to the doll as if she were real, however in order to reduce Lars' dependence on her, they start filling her "schedule" with social events and volunteer programs. This also has the effect of forcing Lars to interact more with the townspeople. When Margo reveals to Lars she has broken up with her boyfriend, Lars agrees to go bowling with her while Bianca attends a school board meeting; later they are joined by more friends. The evening represents Lars beginning to bond with others and communicate more socially.
One morning, Gus and Karin are awakened by a panicked Lars, alarmed because Bianca is unresponsive, and she is rushed to the hospital. After Lars tells Gus and Karin that Bianca is dying, Berman explains that Lars alone has made these decisions about Bianca's future. The news spreads through town, and the neighbors come to realize what this means in relation to Lars' recovery. During a last visit to the lake, Gus and Karin witness a despondent Lars in the water with a "dying" Bianca.
Bianca's funeral is well-attended by the townspeople; after Bianca is buried, Lars and Margo linger at the gravesite. When Margo suggests they catch up with the others, Lars asks if she would like to take a walk. She accepts.
Allusions
Lars has aspects of a modern Pygmalion, and the film adapts the legend as a romantic comedy.[3] Pygmalion falls in love with his statue of a beautiful woman: “He often felt the statue with his hands, to see if it was flesh, or ivory still, and then no longer admitted it was ivory.”[4] While Aphrodite answers Pygmalion's prayers and brings the statue Galatea to life, the story of Lars instead concludes with the doll Bianca being mourned as though she had been alive.
In The Real Story of Lars and the Real Girl, a special feature on the DVD release of the film, screenwriter Nancy Oliver reveals the inspiration for her script was an actual website, RealDoll.com, which is featured in the film. While researching "weird websites" for an article, Oliver found RealDoll.com. She wrote the script in 2002.[5] The script was the third-ranked screenplay in The Black List in 2005.[6][7]
Film credits include Rosalie MacKintosh as "Bianca wrangler" and Karly Bowen as "assistant Bianca wrangler."[10][11]
Release
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2007, before going into limited release in the U.S. on October 12, 2007. It initially opened on seven screens in New York City, New York; and Los Angeles, California, and earned $90,418 on its opening weekend. It later expanded to 321 theaters and remained in release for 147 days, earning $5,972,884 domestically and $5,320,639 in other markets for a worldwide box-office total of $11,293,663.[2]
Lars and the Real Girl received positive reviews from critics, especially for Gosling's performance.[13] On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 81%, based on reviews from 140 critics, and an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Lars and the Real Girl could've so easily been a one-joke movie. But the talented cast, a great script, and direction never condescend to its character or the audience."[14] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 32 reviews.[15]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three and a half out of four and observed, "The film wisely never goes for even one moment that could be interpreted as smutty or mocking. There are so many ways [it] could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity. It has a kind of purity to it."[16]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "a gentle comedy, offbeat but never cute, never lewd and never going for shortcut laughs that might diminish character."[17]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, "American self-nostalgia is a dependable racket, and if the filmmakers had pushed into the realm of nervous truth, had given Lars and the town folk sustained shadows, not just cute tics and teary moments, it might have worked. Instead the film is palatable audience bait of average accomplishment that superficially recalls the plain style of Alexander Payne, but without any of the lacerating edges or moral ambiguity."[18]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "the sweetest, most innocent, most completely enjoyable film around," "a film whose daring and delicate blend of apparent irreconcilables will sweep you off your feet if you're not careful. The creators of this film were fiercely determined not to go so much as a millimeter over the line into sentiment, tawdriness or mockery. It's the rare film that is the best possible version of itself, but Lars fits that bill."[19]
Alissa Simon of Variety stated, "Craig Gillespie's sweetly off-kilter film plays like a Coen brothers riff on Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon tales, defying its lurid premise with a gentle comic drama grounded in reality ... what's fresh and charming is the way the characters surrounding the protagonist also grow as they help him through his crisis."[20]
The film has received favorable reviews from Christian faith-based media,[21] and has been recommended as an instructional tool and a means for opening a dialogue on tolerance.[22]
