Ryan “Drive” “Only God Forgives” Gosling’s directing debut is rated only 5.9 on IMDb. It indeed is not a popular-looking film, but I guess that the people who enjoy the two mentioned films, might actually like “Lost River” too. Gosling was apparently inspired by Refn’s approach. “Lost River” is as slow and minimalistic as these two of Refn.
There is not too much of a story to “Lost River”. The film title refers to a small town that is almost abandoned. If I understand it correctly, Lost River was founded when another small town was flooded to create a reservoir-lake. Still its inhabitents get out (because of the economic crisis?) and Lost River has only a handfull inhabitents left.
We mostly follow Billy and her two sons. Billy tries to raise enough money to keep the house and runs into the weirdest job, allowing Gosling to tell a macabre story. The oldest son Bones tries to make money collecting copper, but he runs into a more powerfull opponent.
Just a few characters, no too much dialogue or ‘events’, bright images, low speed. “Lost River” might indeed not be a film for anyone, but I must say that I find it not bad at all.
