Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: Joaquin Phoenix at the heart of a love triangle.
After Little Odessa, The Yards and The Night Belongs to Us, James Gray abandons mafia stories – his favorite theme, at the heart of all his previous films – in favor of a love story. The director is then inspired by “White Nights”, a short story by Dostoyevsky, about a man who develops a platonic love and a real obsession for a woman he meets in the street.
Presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, Two Lovers stands out from the usual cinema romances because it mixes amorous passion with an identity crisis. At the height of his art, James Gray films love as an existential drama. Benefiting from a magnificent twilight light (which we owe to cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay), the film exudes both melancholy and the furious madness of passionate love. The actors all deliver an intense performance, from Joaquin Phoenix to Gwyneth Paltrow via the enigmatic Elias Koteas and the sensual Vinessa Shaw.
Upon its theatrical release, Two Lovers enjoys immense critical success in France, to the point of finding itself in the “tops” of the end of the year of the Cahiers du Cinéma. It was also nominated for a César in the Best Foreign Film category.
Two Lovers by James Gray with Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw…
Tonight on Arte at 9 p.m.