Lost River (2014)

Directed by: Ryan Gosling
Country: USA

Movie Review: “Lost River” is a lost flick. Positioned somewhere between a violent neo-noir horror thriller and an absurdist mysterious drama, the film is a very personal effort by the much-appreciated actor of “Drive” and “Blue Valentine”, Ryan Gosling, who appears here as a producer and simultaneously first-time writer-director. The outcome turns out being frustratingly unfulfilling due to a preponderant inability for giving an adjusted course to the devious narrative fragments whose final composition failed miserably to attain harmony and focus. The story centers on the single mother, Billy (Christina Hendricks), who agrees joining a macabre nightclub, where the grotesque mixes with the burlesque, accepting the offer from a sinister bank manager, Dave (Ben Mendelsohn). She had a strong motive to do it, and the reason was that eviction is knocking on her door after three months behind in loan payments. Billy’s son, Bones (Iain De Caestecker), thinks he found a solution by stealing copper from a degenerate mad man, Bully (Matt Smith), who likes to stand up in his convertible, adapted to his eccentricity, yelling at everyone that he owns the city, and the country, and the world. Besides mother and son fighting two different battles against two distinct villains, there’s also a parallel silly story about Bones’ girlfriend’s ghostly grandmother, vanished from the face of the earth after entering into a secret town located in the bottom of a reservoir. Betrayed by a shabby screenwriting, Gosling shows not to know what he wants to deliver with this sour cocktail of styles, songs, moods and amorphous scenarios that keep colliding in tone. Visually close to Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives”, “Lost River” is vulnerable at its backbone.