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Lars and The Real Girl

This is my first post and most likely going to be the farthest off the beaten path that I will go, but this movie occupies a large part of my brain so I feel the need to write about to an audience of zero. As my bio suggests, I also plan to talk about films where women are props for the male characters development. Lars and The Real Girl has a literal prop woman to assist in the lead character, Lars’ development. Lars, played by Ryan Gosling, is a man with quirks that make it difficult for him to interact even with his family who live across the driveway from him. Lars’ mother died while delivering him and his father passed a few years before the film takes place. His brother, Gus played by Paul Schneider, and pregnant wife, Karin played by Emily Mortimer, live in their childhood home while Lars occupies the garage. Karin desperatly hopes for Lars to interact more with his family, frustrating and testing Lars’ boundaries, but she is pleasantly surprised when Lars comes knocking notifying that a woman is coming over for dinner. Karin and Gus are then greeted by Bianca, the life-size sex doll Lars is convinced is his girlfriend visiting from Brazil.

Bianca is quite literally a tool for Lars to use to develop and let go of some of his past trauma. However, unlike in most movies, I really don’t mind. Although I could go on and on about how Lars and The Real Girl is the greatest depiction of empathy in film... I will hold my tongue to discuss how women, in particular motherhood, play a major hidden role in this movie.

Lars, until his brothers marriage to Karin, lacks female representation in his life. Not only does his life lack female representation but he suffers trauma from feeling responsible for his mothers passing. It is also divulged that after the passing of his mother, Lars and Gus’ father grew cold and bitter. It is no mistake then that when we are introduced to Karin, someone that actively attempts to take a caregiving role in Lars’ life, she is visibly pregnant. Lars from the very first moments displays deep concern that something may happen to Karin while she is pregnant, immediately showing his fear surrounding the concept of maternity. Bianca comforts this fear in more ways than one. Lars explains to Biancas physician, and his therapist, Dr. Dagmar that Bianca is infertile as a result of her mother dying in labor. Identicall to his mothers passing. While explaining this fact to Dr. Dagmar he expresses his deep anxiety surrounding Karins pregnancy. In addition, Lars notes that Bianca is very religious and does not feel comfortable sharing a bed with him, which is why she lives at Gus and Karin’s. Although Bianca is made for sex, in his delusion, Lars makes a concious decision to seperate Bianca entirely from sex and maternity. Bianca’s manifestation at that current time could largely be attribruted to Karin’s pregnacy and its trigger of Lars’ trauma and guilt surrounding his mothers death. Bianca served as a female figure in his life that is completely safe from the dangers he connotates with womanhood.

Biancas manifestion, whether intentional or not, creates a large female support system for Lars. While everyone at his job and church are supportive of Lars’, it is the women of his community that play the largest role in allowing Lars to let go of Bianca. Mrs. Peterson from Lars’ church, played by Nicky Guadagni, is one of his largest pillars of support. Much like Karin, even prior to Bianca, Mrs. Peterson attempted to force Lars out of his social isolation by suggesting that he asks his coworker, Margot, on a date. When Lars brings Bianca into his life, she not only advocates to the other members of the church to be patient and non-judgemental of Lars but goes as far as bringing Bianca to her volunteering position at the hospital. Mrs. Peterson is influential making sure Bianca is given a purpose. With the assistance of other women in the community, Bianca is a mannequin at the mall, a reader to children, and a model of wigs at the hair salon. While this may appear to only serve in making Lars’ delusion more realistic, Bianca being given purpose within the town makes her more 3-dimensional to Lars allowing him to seperate from his crutch. If Bianca were to remain a 2-dimensional symbol of a woman that does not possess the parts of womanhood that terrify him, Lars would would of never been able to develop a positive relationship with maternity and women in general. This newfound positive relationship can also be fed by his new network of female friends who care for him deeply.

Dr. Dagmar, played by Patricia Clarkson, also plays a major role in assisting Lars through his trauma. Lars only agrees to see Dr. Dagmar because she suggests that she monitors Bianca’s blood pressure on a weekly basis, but I would argue he is also fully concious that the purpose of the visits are to evaluate him. Dr. Dagmar firsts suggests that she helps Lars through his phobia surrounding being physically touched, but he quickly displays some willingness to open up about his past and his anxieties surrounding Karin’s pregnancy. Most of this visits consist of him sitting one on one with Dr. Dagmar in her office, an emotional intamacy that Lars has most likely never experienced with anyone, let alone a woman. Beyond being a influential woman in his life, she also radically shifts his perspective on loneliness. In one of his meetings, Lars learns that Dr. Dagmar lost her husband and that sometime she feels so lonely she “forgets how to spell her name.” I believe this detail is crucial in Lars’ development as he has a particularly negative relationship with lonliness. Growing up his father was so lonely that it largely left him unable to care for Lars. Lars also experiences intense lonliness himself. Dr. Dagmar demonstrates to Lars that you can coexist with lonliness instead of it allowing to consume your whole being, allowing him to begin to let go of Bianca.

The most important female relationship for Lars is of course Karin. Although she is a large source of Lars’ anxiety manifesting in the form of Bianca, Karin is the most influential in reforming his relationship with womanhood and maternity . Lars has never had a maternal figure, and although she is his sister in-law, Karin takes on a role of a caregiver in his life. When introduced to Bianca, Gus heavily with the concept of playing into Lars’ delusion but Karin makes it a non-negotiable. She leads the charge in rounding up support for Lars and goes above and beyond to make her apart of the family. Karin has an ability to set aside pride and time to help Lars in any possible way, an ability we often associate with mothers. While Lars is cognizant that his presence makes Gus uncomfortable, Karin makes up for it in love and comfort. One particular scene stands out where Lars is visibility frustrated because he is under the impression that people care more for Bianca than they do for him. When Lars claims that people do not care, Karin goes on a passionate rant that she ends with “None of this is easy-for any of us- but we do it... Oh! We do it for you! So don’t dare tell me how we don’t care.” Lars most likely has never experienced such an exclamation of love and compassion coming from someone in is family, and the fact it is coming from the closest thing he has to a maternal figure heavily moves him along in his journey of coping with his mothers death. This interaction marks a turning point in the film where we see Lars begin to truly let go of Bianca, ultimately leading to the moment he declares that Bianca has passed.

Lars and The Real Girl is a beautiful look on the innately human ability to possess empathy for others and ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable it is. In a sense, I have always seen Lars’ manifestation of Bianca was an act of self-compassion. I believe his brain created her with the intention of letting her go, and moving past his trauma. While I find this movie beautiful in countless ways, writing about from a lens of womanhood and maternity only deepens my love for it more. While the “female” centered at the heart of the movie is in fact an object, there is not an ounce of female objectification in this film.