Two Lovers

What's striking about this particular entry in the Phoenix-as-isolated-eccentric canon is its flavour of defeated animal loneliness.

Joaquin Phoenix stars-and delivers his most self-scourging performance-in James Gray's taut and melancholy Brighton Beach romance.

The film never feels dark or gloom-laden. The performances are so sensitive, so convincing, that we are drawn inescapably into a real world of pain and solace.

Despair and confusion are explored in Two Lovers with a rigorous, unsentimental directness that is also full of feeling.

No film has captured how we idealize others in relationships better than Two Lovers.

Gray gives us nothing to cling to emotionally, and so he leaves the audience floating in the indifference of open space, hoping for something worthwhile to happen that might make us care.

Episode 49: Hustlers / Ad Astra / Two Lovers / ALTIPLANO

Gray has made a thoughtful and sensitive chamber piece, and he gets a fine performance from Phoenix, who conveys his character's anguish and heartache with deep feeling.