Our Daily Trailer: LARS AND THE REAL GIRL

I'm wrapping up unconventional rom-com week with one of my favorite romantic films: Lars and the Real Girl. What's more unconventional than Ryan Gosling of all people having a relationship with a Real Doll?

Gosling plays the titular Lars, a closed off, awkward type who is hesitant to interact with other people - even his brother's wife, who offers to have him over for dinner constantly. Everyone tries to socially engage and involve Lars, but he remains firmly guarded. It's only when he "meets someone" on the internet that his family begins to understand that perhaps there's something deeper going on - that perhaps Lars' social aversions are indicative of something incredibly sad. With the aid of the local doctor (Patricia Clarkson, reuniting with her All the Real Girls co-star Paul Schneider here), the people in Lars' small town begin to treat Bianca as if she were real, in an effort to help him.

On the surface, Lars and the Real Girl is a little silly and quirky, but it's ultimately a film about that inherent human condition, loneliness, and the ways we embrace that loneliness - however painful - in an effort to avoid more pain. Lars is living in self-imposed loneliness, afraid to get close to anyone, but in order to feel extraordinary love and happiness, we must feel pain, too. It's a risk most of us take every day, but Lars can't stand the thought of risking more unhappiness for a few moments of joy with another human.

Through Bianca, Lars is able to begin opening up and interacting with other people - she becomes a form of therapy, enabling him to accept the kindness so many people in his life are eager to bestow upon him. And although this is Gosling's film, the heart of it lies in Emily Mortimer's performance as Karin, Lars' sister-in-law. Mortimer displays all the rawness of frustrated empathy, the determination of the will to understand and love. The film features ideas about maturity and manhood, of the ways broken families can cause irreparable harm if we allow them to, but ultimately, this is a film about empathy and understanding - about allowing others to help you tear down those carefully constructed walls so they can reach you. Mortimer's performance perfectly captures those ideas with heartbreaking realness.

Perhaps the most unconventional aspect of this rom-com is just how conventionally relatable it is.