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Lost River is a small town in the middle of nowhere, USA, that has been
hard hit by the latest economic downturn, and now whoever can leaves town,
those who can't see their town decay. In these surroundings, Bones (Iain
De Caestecker) has taken to stripping abandoned buildings off their copper
pipes to sell them to the local hardwareman ... but of late, the local
bully (Matt Smith) has declared all copper in town his, and Bones' job has
become more and more dangerous - and since the bully has made Bones his
number 1 enemy, Bones finds himself constantly on the run. And once
running from the bully, Bones finds a road leading directly into the local
reservoir, and researching the history of the reservoir he learns of a
dinosaur theme part at the bottom of it. Somehow, the life of the
grandma (Barbara Steele) of Bones' girlfriend Rat (Saoirse Ronan) is tied
to the themepark at the bottom of the lake, as she hasn't spoken a word
since her husband died during construction of the reservoir. Bones' mum
tries hard to be the best mum ever for him and his kid brother (Landyn
Stewart), but she's without a job (there aren't any in the area), and
three months behind with her payments on her house ... so in order to not
lose her house for good, she accepts an offer from her banker Dave (Ben
Mendelsohn) to work at a weird club that offers sort of grand guignol
themed burlesque entertainment, including elaborately staged fake murders
and mutilations, and tons of fake blood. But the real money is not made in
the stageshows but in the backrooms where the performers are enclosed into
see-through protective cases and the customers can live out their most
perverse desires - for quite a bit of money of course. Now of course Dave
has offered this job for his own ulterior motives. Eventually, all of
these stories come to a quite brutal head ... Eva Mendes plays the main
girl at the club Bones mum starts to work at. Now it cannot be
denied that first time director Ryan Gosling has been inspired more than a
bit by David Lynch, both in terms of surreal narrative and grotesque (yet
often lyrical) imagery. But that said, Gosling proves to be more than a
mere copycat and manages to suck the viewer into the film's weird world.
And to choose this approach and story for his first movie is a very bold
step for a rather successful actor that Gosling has become by the time
this was made. All that said, I wouldn't go so far and call Lost
River a perfect movie - basically it almost demands to be compared to
David Lynch, and comes out only second best in comparison as Gosling lacks
power as raw and imagination as wild as Lynch ... but coming out second
best to David Lynch is still a pretty good rank.
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