Two Lovers

The whole film feels like a throwback, at once swooningly romantic and achingly sad. It has an old fashioned charm mixed with modern romantic angst that feels vibrant and sexy without trying too hard.

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Two Lovers, his (James Gray) third feature, is set once again in the Russian-Jewish communities of Brooklyn. Like his other films, The Yards and We Own the Night, it is unafraid of the grand gesture, but this often looks oddly like an adapted stage-play - Two Lovers takes Gray closer to the idiom of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. (...)
There are good, heartfelt performances here, but the credibility gap was too wide to be bridged.

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Pheonix certainly should reconsider his plan to abandon acting: he's on fine, subtle form in James Gray's affecting drama. (...)
A beautiful casual restlessness in the acting makes the people very real, even if they are ostensibly off-the-peg characters – mixed-up guy, nice Jewish girl, flaky shiksa. (...) Paltrow reminds us how good she can be: her Michelle is flirtatious, vulnerable, utterly convincing as the kind who would latch on to a man as damaged as herself. (...)
This modest, idiosyncratic film isn't especially out to please or impress. Two Lovers could almost have been made in the 1950s, its introspection out of step with current American cinema. The material is hardly unfamiliar, and I wouldn't say that Gray makes it new, yet he makes it resonate in a distinctive minor key.

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