The Indy Film Club: Sex doll romcom Lars and the Real Girl preaches empathy above all

You wouldn’t envy the marketing team tasked with selling a wholesome dramedy about a man who falls in love with a woman-shaped piece of silicone, writes Clarisse Loughrey, but it works

Lars (Ryan Gosling) finds an unusual saviour (MGM)

Before 2017’s I, Tonya – which crystallised the pain of figure skating’s most controversial figure – director Craig Gillespie found empathy in an even more unlikely subject. The Lars of Lars and the Real Girl, played by Ryan Gosling, is a lonesome young man. His mother died in childbirth. Grief-stricken, his father retreated from the world. Lars tries to suffocate that trauma under his buttoned-up shirts and thick, wool sweaters – barriers against the human touch, which he’s instinctively repulsed by. As he explains: “It hurts… like a burn.” He lives in a cabin behind a house belonging to his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer), but evades them at every opportunity.

Then he finds his saviour: a “RealDoll”, or anatomically correct sex doll, he names Bianca. He introduces her to Gus and Karin as his new girlfriend: a half-Brazilian, half-Danish missionary. To explain her lack of mobility, he tells them she’s a wheelchair user. To justify her silence, he claims that she’s even shyer than he is. Both his loved ones, and the citizens of his small Wisconsin town, do their best support him, as confounded as they might be. In time, they grow strangely fond of Bianca. Some fuss over her hair and clothes; others invite her into their homes and workspaces.

It’s a warm, funny, and oddly tender film. It wears its naivete and belief in an essential human kindness as a badge of pride. The point isn’t that no small town in America would ever band together to guide one man through his mental health crisis, but that we deserve the momentary fantasy where one could. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007, found critical acclaim – it even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay – but little public support. That’s not surprising. You wouldn’t envy the marketing team tasked with selling a wholesome dramedy about a man who falls in love with a woman-shaped piece of silicone.