Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good start, but then it gets ruined

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) tries to kill himself and is rescued from drowning. He is depressed after breaking up with his fiancée for genetic reason. His parents (Isabella Rossellini, Moni Moshonov) set him up with their business partner's shy daughter Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw). He's moved back in with his parents and working at their Brooklyn dry cleaners. He falls for neighbor Michelle Rausch (Gwyneth Paltrow) and starts pursuing her. She is wild, unattainable, and having an affair with her married co-worker Ronald Blatt (Elias Koteas).It could be better if Leonard is more appealing. Michelle toys with him like a sad little boy. It's definitely a more adult love triangle where it's not only about lust and obsession. It's also calculations, deceptions, and settling. It's complicated. I would have preferred a simpler nerdy Leonard out of his league with the impossibly beautiful Michelle. Instead, he's a sad and slightly unstable guy. This is interesting but not necessarily crowd pleasing.

You'll see plenty of delusional thinking in this one.A 30-ish guy comes home to his family after a stint in the loony bin. He is suicidal, popping psychiatric meds, works in his dad's laundry (but fails at even that simple job) and is indulged in an "art" he's not very good at and that we never see him work at. He is inarticulate and self- pitying and still has a photo of his fiancé, now two years gone, by his bed. Into this pitiful life come two beautiful employed women who want him very much. Why? No story reason suggests itself. No one with any life experience would believe such women would. When he has sex with them, they have orgasms within 15 seconds or so, leading me to suspect the writer/director may have never had sex with an actual woman. (Or maybe the women are faking it to get rid of him more quickly, which would make some sense.)His parents never are anything less than 100% supportive, no matter how awful his behavior, which I you could argue explains how much of a loser he is, but I don't believe the script is that self-aware.I liked the set design, the score wasn't as manipulative as you might fear it would be considering the soap opera nature of the story, and the acting was fine. But the screenwriter's ideas about women are risible fantasies of an adolescent mind. I fully expect him to be writing movies in 50 years wherein hot 18 year old women are incredibly attracted to ugly 70 year old men, because we've seen that's what the puer aeternus does.

"Two Lovers" is a slow moving thoughtful drama that examines the lives of three vulnerable thirty something New Yorkers.We meet Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) at the start of the movie, as he attempts suicide. He hasn't gotten over the break up of his engagement. He lives with his parents and has a job in the family business. His parents introduce him to Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a daughter of family friends. She is beautiful but shy and quiet. It is clear the parents of both people would like to make a "match". Sandra and Leonard get on very well so it looks like their parents will get their wish.Then Leonard meets Michelle (Gyneth Paltrow), who has just moved into the same apartment building. They also get on very well. Leonard is very taken by her beauty and lifestyle, which seems much more exciting than his. She has a boyfriend, who is very rich and treats her badly at times and it clear that Leonard that wants to "rescue" her.Of course things don't go smoothly in this love triangle as Leonard starts to go out with Sandra, while still keeping contact with Michelle in the hope that they will somehow become a couple.The ending may not be to everyone's liking but I enjoyed the movie. There are good performances from all the three lead actors and I particularly loved Isabella Rossellini as Leonard's mother, always worried about her troubled son and hoping that he will find happiness.

(Spoilers) The movie starts with an aborted suicide attempt by Leonard Kraditor. Leonard is in his early 30s, lives with his Jewish parents, and works for his dad's dry cleaning store. Before we know it Leonard is romantically involved with his neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Sandra, the attractive daughter of a business associate of his dad.There are many things wrong with the script; I will cover only a few of them. The thing that sinks the story from the beginning is that neither of the women that Leonard is involved with would ever give him the time of day in real life. Living with his parents, being inarticulate, and not being able to succeed in his simple job of delivering cleaning to his dad's customers would set off enough alarms for any woman to give this man wide berth. And Sandra would have known of his suicidal impulses--such things are never secret among close families. Why would Sandra, an attractive healthy woman, pursue such a loser? Leonard's room is a mess, a physical manifestation of his mind; his mother would never allow for this kind of mess in her house.At the end Leonard and Michelle, in a spur of the moment decision, are to take off to California together. You know that this is never going to happen and are just waiting for the excuse which comes in the form of Michelle's announcing that her high-dollar married lover has decided to divorce and be with her. Leonard is crushed and in despair, but instead of another suicide attempt he returns to a party and offers Sandra the diamond ring that he was going to give to Michelle. Any normal person is not going to switch emotional gears so easily, so I doubt that an emotional train wreck like Leonard would be able to do so.Isabella Rossellini is good as Leonard's mother; Joaquin Phoenix is convincing as a mumbling nerd, but not so much as a romantic partner; sadly, Gwyneth Paltrow is wasted.This is an unbelievable concoction dreamed up by screenwriters who seemingly have little understanding how real people interact.