Review: Two Lovers and a Bear
Two Lovers and a Bear, the latest from writer-director Kim Nguyen, features exactly that: two lovers in the form of Dane DeHaan and Tatiana Maslany's Roman and Lucy and a scene-stealing polar bear whose role in their romance is better left unspoiled.
The young couple live in a small town named Apex, located in the Canadian province of Nunavut, but it may as well be the end of the world, so desolate is its snow and ice-covered landscape. Unlike the other inhabitants who were born and will die there, Roman and Lucy have come to this remote arctic outpost to flee their demons, though demons always find a way of following those who try to escape them. In Lucy's case, she's plagued by memories of her abusive father who, though deceased, keeps appearing to her in nightmares and during panic attacks. For Roman, he carries the guilt of kicking his own abusive father so hard that he broke his own ankle and may have left his father for dead.
Not much happens at the start until Lucy learns she's been accepted into a biology course down south and that she will have to leave in two weeks. Roman initially refuses to go with her, saying he'd rather kill himself than have to go "back there," but eventually relents and the two pack up their things, load up their snowmobiles, and head out into what seems to be a never-ending nowhere. Warnings of a massive blizzard force them to take shelter in an abandoned military base, but more dangerous are the emotional tempests still brewing within.
There's a nicely evenhanded current of melancholy that pulses through the film and that is best embodied in a moving scene where the lovers come across several reindeer that followed each other to their snowy deaths. The moment also jumpstarts Two Lovers and a Bear into its more powerful second half, where Nguyen steers the tale into slightly sci-fi/horror territory as the couple spend a night in the military base. One never quite knows where the story is going, and that unpredictability is both blessing and curse. In many respects, one could view Two Lovers and a Bear as three separate vignettes or, perhaps more precisely, three separate genres in the guise of vignettes - drama, survival story, horror film - where the lovers' efforts to deal with their issues are the throughline.
However, the individual vignettes are not always successful in providing any sort of narrative momentum. The first half, in particular, threatens to be an aggressively generic indie romance that innocuously plays against a rather magical and magnificent backdrop. Indeed, Nicolas Bolduc's widescreen lensing keeps eyes glued to the screen even when emotional interest is at an ebb. DeHaan and Maslany make for a convincing pair of tortured souls, and their strong chemistry together and individual dedication to their roles increase the impact of the final haunting moments of this uneven but intriguing film.
Two Lovers and a Bear
Directed by: Kim Nguyen
Written by: Kim Nguyen
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Tatiana Maslaney, Gordon Pinsent, John Ralston, Kakki Peter
