Lars and the Real Girl

This film is a story of Lars, a young man whose mother died during childbirth, and grew up with his heartbroken father. He finds it hard to relate and interact with his family, coworkers and fellow parishioners at the church. He lives in the converted garage behind his brother and sister-in-law, Gus and Karen's house and wants to be left alone. He always declines invitations to their house and doesn't have any friends. One day he tells Gus and Karen that he has a friend visiting that he met on the internet and would like to bring her over to meet them. They are shocked to discover that she is a life-size doll that Lars had ordered off an adult web site, named Bianca. Gus and Karen don't know what to do so they bring Lars to their family doctor Dagmar. She tells them that he has created a delusion and they all need to go along with it if they have any hope of figuring out why Lars is behaving the way he is and if he is ever going to get better. As the story goes on, not only do Karen and Gus treat Bianca as a real person, the whole town accepts her as Lars' girlfriend and makes her feel welcome. She becomes involved in the community and everyone develops a special connection with Bianca and Lars.

There were so many parts of this moving that I thought were important, but one thing that I thought was especially important was that Lars truly believed with his whole heart that Bianca was real. I think it is important to understand that to be able to follow Lars through the rest of his journey. He had to develop this delusion to help him cope with a serious issue that he was carrying inside since childhood. Bianca was as real to him as this issue was, he needed her to heal and realize what was really real. It was very interesting to me that after Lars had that conversation with Gus about how he knew when he became a man, his whole attitude toward Bianca changed. This was an event that was very important to the story. This was the beginning of Lars letting go of Bianca and his issues and becoming a man himself. I think what Gus said about doing not what is best for yourself, but what is best for everyone, was something that Lars took to heart and changed him. After that conversation is when Bianca became ill and died. This was significant because when Bianca died so did a part of Lars, but I think in a positive way that helped his evolve into a more functional person.

What I thought was interesting in the film was how Lars slowly and unknowingly developed feelings for Margo. At the beginning of the film it is obvious that Margo has feelings or him but Lars awkwardly ignores her ever time she tries to interact with him. When Margo starts dating someone else, Lars slowly becomes bothered by it. As Lars takes Bianca into the community he begins to interact with more people. He begins to interact with Margo and when she tells him that she has broken up with her boyfriend, you get a sense that Lars is happy about this. Margo

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