Film / News
Ryan Gosling live satellite Q&A
Drive star Ryan Gosling has directed his first feature film, Lost River, which gets an exclusive preview at the Watershed and Vue Cribbs Causeway cinemas on Thur 9 April before it opens the following day. Gosling will be participating in a live satellite Q&A after the screening, possibly to explain what it’s all about.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Lost River is a dark fairy tale about love, family and the fight for survival in the face of danger. In the virtually abandoned city of Lost River, Billy (Christina Hendricks), a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld in her quest to save her childhood home and hold her family together. Her teenage son Bones (Iain De Casestecker) discovers a mystery about the origins of Lost River that triggers his curiosity and sets into motion an unexpected journey that will test his limits and the limits of those he loves.
To say that critics have been unimpressed would be a massive understatement. Indeed, they queued up to discharge both both barrels when the self-consciously Lynchian film was unveiled at Cannes last year, delighting connoisseurs of hatchet jobs everywhere.
Variety put the boot in thusly: “Had Terrence Malick and David Lynch somehow conceived an artistic love-child together, only to see it get kidnapped, strangled and repeatedly kicked in the face by Nicolas Winding Refn, the results might look and sound something like Lost River, a risible slab of Detroit gothic that marks an altogether inauspicious writing-directing debut for Ryan Gosling.”
Describing Lost River as “mouth-dryingly lousy”, the Telegraph noted that Gosling delivers “a film so mind-bogglingly pleased with itself that the words ‘five stars – a masterpiece – Ryan Gosling’ might as well appear on the poster.”
“The visuals are undeniably dreamy, but they mostly seem borrowed from other filmmakers’ dreams,” sniffed the Hollywood Reporter.
“For ‘River’ read ‘Opportunity’ or ‘Any Sense Of Proportion Or Humility’ or maybe just ‘Mind’,” added The Guardian. “It is colossally indulgent, shapeless, often fantastically and unthinkingly offensive and at all times insufferably conceited. Yet it is frustrating precisely because it sometimes isn’t so bad. There is something in there somewhere – striking images and moments, and the crazy energy of a folie de grandeur.”
Indeed, Time Out New York made a modest case for the defence: “You almost have to give it props for how resolutely batshit it is. Almost.”
If you want to hear what Mr. Gosling has to say for himself, go here to book tickets at the Watershed and here to book tickets at Vue Cribbs
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