Lars and the Real Girl ****

In the Ryan Gosling vs. James McEvoy debate, I am squarely in the camp of Gosling. Of course, I haven't yet seen "Atonement," which goes wide next week, so look for a future post assessing the star of "Starter for 10," "Becoming Jane" and "The Last King of Scotland." But for now, and especially in the holiday season, I am convinced and moved by Ryan Gosling in "Lars and the Real Girl." Although it opened in October, "Lars" is still playing in 65 indie-type theaters around the U.S., including two in Denver: the Starz Tivoli and the new Neighborhood Flix Cinema & Café. Hopefully it will stick around a few more weeks following Gosling's Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical.

Written by "Six Feet Under" scribe and co-producer Nancy Oliver, "Lars" tells the story of a painfully withdrawn but nice young man in some unnamed Upper Midwest town. Living a cubicle work life and in a garage apartment behind his brother's house, Lars breaks out of his shell when the exotic girlfriend he met on the Internet comes to visit. But Bianca is not a real girl, she's a life-size sex doll, complete with clothes and a wheelchair furnished by Lars. His brother and sister-in law (excellently played by Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer) don't know what to do or how to react. So they take Lars to the family doctor, Dagmar (a suberb Patricia Clarkson), who is also a psychologist ("You have to be both this far north," one character says). Dagmar counsels playing along with the delusion until she can figure out how to treat Lars. What follows is a funny, heart-tugging fable about what friends and community can do to help one of their own.

Throughout the movie Gosling plays Lars with such conviction, is so true to this shut-in character, that you cheer any small triumph in his journey. And can we believe that people will play along with make-believe? Well, isn't that what we're doing any time we sit in a darkened theater and give ourselves over to the make-believe on screen?

Gosling is fascinating to watch, and not just here. At his best, his work has focused on troubled young men. After much television work in the '90s, including "The New Micky Mouse Club" culminating as the star in 50 episodes of the television series "Young Hercules" in 1998 and 1999, he has played in a string of often-lauded, usually small box office movies interspersed with some interesting big-budget movies.

Ryan Gosling's indie credentials were established with "The Believer" (2002, $417K box office), based on the true story of a KKK leader who was revealed to be Jewish, for which the Chicago Film Critic's Association nominated him as Most Promising Performer. Then he appeared as the tortured title character in "The United States of Leland" (2004, $344K) opposite Don Cheadle as the teacher and aspiring writer in the juvenile detention center where Leland is sent. Then women discovered Gosling as the young Noah Calhoun in "The Notebook" (2004, $81M), and he was finally in a blockbuster hit, and the recipient of several "Best On-Screen Kiss" awards. "Stay" (2005, $3.6M) was a big-budget flop, where he played opposite Ewan McGregor as the psychiatrist who strives to keep Gosling's character from killing himself.

That brings us to last year's "Half Nelson" (2006, $2.7M) which brought him a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of an addicted inner-city school teacher trying to do the right thing and finding help in an unlikely friendship with one of his students. Earlier this year, in "Fracture" (2007, $39M), he held his own with heavyweights Anthony Hopkins and David Strathairm. And now we have "Lars," generating $5.6M so far, in a performance of another tortured soul, told without irony and played so delicately, it could earn him another Academy nomination. I hope so, and I hope that this recent pattern of one for the money, one for the art that we're seeing in his role choices, as with several other of our greatest actors, will continue.

Rated PG-13. 106 minutes. Produced by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. Distributed by MGM.