The only time the movie Two Lovers and a Bear lives up to the pulpiness of its title is around two-thirds of the way through its runtime: a young couple speeds across the tundra on a shared snowmobile as The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” is played at full blast. When isolated from the rest of the movie, which is as dour as it is surreal, the scene makes little to no sense but it works anyways. Two Lovers is at its best when it’s the most manic, and it’s singular in that sense. After all, how many movies can boast having Gordon Pinsent voice an all-knowing polar bear?
At the centre of the movie are Roman (Dane DeHaan) and Lucy (Tatiana Maslany), whose traumas catch up to them in the worst possible ways. Both actors, Maslany especially, are eminently charismatic and do nothing but hold the viewer’s attention. While the characters are not deeply written, the performances imbue the leads with aged quality far beyond their years. DeHaan deserves special commendation for selling interactions with the titular polar bear and never turning his character into a snivelling mess.
Kim Nguyen, who directed the movie, is in fine form. His last narrative film, the child-soldier drama Rebelle (released abroad as War Witch), explored some of the same magical realist tropes, although they are much more accentuated here. The true star of the movie, as highlighted by Ngyuen’s lens, is the brutality of the arctic landscape. The film’s most memorable scene shows a herd of reindeer frozen en masse in the waters of a river like a particularly demented Impressionist painting. Some of the more intimate scenes, which are shot mostly in shadow, blend the silhouettes of the two lovers together. It’s pretty ham-fisted imagery but it’s well shot and always lovely to look at.
Unfortunately, the movie’s strengths often work against it. The dreamlike tone, while consistent, causes the movie to have an unintentionally episodic feel. However, the main problem in the movie is the bear. Nguyen is a good director, but the film frequently feels like it’s the amalgam of a number of different films. The bear, despite a genuinely warm performance from Pinsent, feels a bit twee when compared to some of the darker elements of the film, especially when considering how little screen time the bear has. Even so, these are small errors and the movie is no less enjoyable for them.
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Two Lovers and a Bear is a study in contrasts. It’s grounded and dreamy. It’s romantic and unsentimental. While your sympathies for Roman and Lucy will wax and wane as the film progresses, you never get the sense that they are anything less than profoundly in love. The inspired surrealist images are well-executed, if odd, and make the film’s already singular vision even more so.
To put it crudely: the movie is Nicholas Sparks by way of David Cronenberg. If you’re into indie movies or like your romances on the sardonic side, you’re in for an off-kilter but enjoyable treat.
