Phoenix's obsession in "Two Lovers" is a relationship we don't want to end

Phoenix's obsession in "Two Lovers" is a relationship we don't want to end

Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow in "Two Lovers." (Magnolia Pictures )

      Long before Joaquin Phoenix became an award-show gag with his dive into a world of wooly facial hair and near aphasia, he took an impressive plunge in James Gray's romantic drama "Two Lovers." 

It's the sort of brooding turn that makes us mourn Phoenix's threatened retreat from acting. 

He isn't as pretty as Montgomery Clift, yet he evokes that star's ability to reveal inner wounds and discomfort. 

Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, the conscientious son of dedicated parents Reuben and Ruth. He works at his father's dry-cleaning business in Brighton Beach, N.Y. He's recently moved back in with his parents. He takes medication for a bipolar disorder. He shoots photos, which are squirreled away in his mildly unkempt room. 

We meet the 30-something when he intentionally slips off a pier into chilly waters. He's fished out by strangers. But his real buoys come in the form of two very different women. 

He meets Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), a tall blond, in the building's hallway. His momentary chivalry is the start of something. But what? 

At the same time, he becomes the object of affection of the daughter of his father's business associate. Played by Vinessa Shaw, Sandra is hardly a consolation prize. Dark-haired, warm, bright, she's everything a nice Jewish boy might want in a mate, had he not become smitten with a shiksha goddess. 

Michelle is involved with a married man (Elias Koteas). Early on, she warns Leonard in the casual way people often talk about themselves when they don't yet realize their listener wants something more from them. But he's not listening. He's going toward the light. 

For her part, Michelle is as fixed on her lover as Leonard is on her. Romantic love, Gray insists with psychoanalytic compassion, is like that. Leonard's obsessed. Michelle remains clueless. 

Phoenix makes Leonard's yearning to break free palpable. He's named what ails him "Michelle," but she's a symptom, not a cure. 

It's good to see Paltrow in a role that strips bare her character's seeming ease. She gives Michelle a depth that rebuffs judgment. If she's untrustworthy, it's not because she's cruel. She's just too self-involved in her own romantic drama to truly see Leonard. 

She invites him out dancing. She introduces him to her friends. She confides in him with a vulnerability he mistakes as opportunity. 

Gray and co-writer Ric Mendello prove patient when it comes to Leonard's turmoil. His illness isn't exploited. His frustrations ring true. 

As Leonard's mother, Isabella Rossellini demonstrates the hyperawareness one hones as the parent of a mentally fragile child. Israeli actor Moni Monoshov ("We Own the Night") is deft depicting a father's pained and unspoken knowledge of a son's weaknesses. 

Like Paltrow and Shaw, they add greatly to the drama's emotional texture. 

In the end, though, it is Phoenix's hurting performance that owns the film.

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