Toronto film festival uncovers a doll of a Gosling fantasy
TORONTO (AFP) — The Toronto film festival hit a climax this week with the premieres of "Young People F**king" and "Lars and the Real Girl," starring Ryan Gosling falling in love with a plastic sex doll.
In the latter naughty comic melodrama, due in theatres in November, Gosling plays a lonely and delusional Lars Lindstrom who finds solace in the imaginary affections of a synthetic soul-mate named Bianca.
More astonishing, folks in his small town, who want to see him with a good wife and raising a family, accept her -- despite their trepidations that the couple met online.
And so, Bianca goes bowling, starts a modeling career and eats dinner with his family.
At a press conference, the 27-year-old former child actor, whose recent acclaimed films include "The Believer" (2001) and "Half Nelson" (2006), quipped while describing the cast and crew's reverence for Bianca during shooting: "Laugh all you want, but I challenge all of you to spend 20 minutes in Bianca's presence and not fall in love."
His own bond with the plastic heroine became so strong, he said, that he kept one of the two manequins in the movie, admittedly agitating his girlfriend Rachel McAdams.
The film by director Craig Gillespie also stars Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner and Patricia Clarkson.
Meanwhile, young Canadian filmmakers Aaron Abrams and Martin Gero celebrated the release of their first film "Young People F**king" at a swingers' club, packed with bunnies and studs for a midnight party.
Audiences at the Toronto film festival cheered the romantic comedy about four couples and a threesome, which has much less graphic sex scenes than Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution."
About 30 minutes of explicit sex and some violence was removed from Lee's picture, which last week won the Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival and was screened this week in Toronto, ahead of its release in China.
In the United States, audiences will see the uncut version with an NC-17 rating.
"Young People F**king" follows two longtime friends who have sex after separate bad relationships, a known player on a first date with a younger woman, a couple on a post-modern date after breaking up, a couple stuck in a domestic rut, and two roommates who hate each other, but are willing to put aside their disagreement to bed beautiful blonde Inez (Natalie Lisinska).
While the narrative strands do not cross, the various couples (and trio) are linked by their fear and ignorance of their own desires, and crippling insecurities.
"These days, there's like this whole commitment of relationships and safe sex and all that stuff," Aaron Abrams, who co-wrote the script with director Martin Gero, told the Toronto Star.
"People are trying to separate love and sex, and just be like, 'I want to just have fun! I'm going to take control of my own sexuality.' And that comes with itself its own problems, which I think our movie is trying to discuss."
Over 450 actors showed up for the casting call.
And the "tongue-in-cheek" title proved to be problematic during filming, commented Gero.
"Our locations manager came up to us and said, 'I can't go to peoples' house and knock on their door and say, 'Hey, I'm shooting a movie, it's called Young People F**king, we'd like to use your bedroom.' So we changed it to Young People for that," he said.
"I think f**king is like the granddaddy of swears. You still can't say it on television, either, although you can throw a 'sh*t' once an hour," Gero added.
The film also stars Abrams, Carly Pope, Callum Blue, Diora Baird, Sonya Bennett and Josh Cooke, Kristin Booth, Josh Dean, Ennis Esmer and Peter Oldring.
