[yasr_overall_rating]
Set in a small town near the North Pole where roads lead to nowhere, the story follows Roman (DeHaan) and Lucy (Maslany), two burning souls who come together to make a leap for life and inner peace.
Tatiana Maslany came to my attention for the first time last year when I began watching “Orphan Black.” I proceeded to binge-watch the show’s four seasons after having watched the very first episode and cannot wait for the final season to air this year. That doesn’t happen to me often but she made such an impact on me, playing a multitude of various characters, sometimes all at once, that I am now a lifelong fan. I recently had the opportunity to watch “Two Lovers and a Bear,” her latest indie feature and her performance is gut-wrenching. Here, she plays Lucy, and lives in a small town in the Arctic circle. She is in love with Roman (Dane DeHaan), who also lives and works there but soon she informs him that she must move back to the U.S. as a stalker is following her. When Roman inquires as to who the stalker is, she doesn’t tell him, just that he appears at the most inopportune times. Roman informs her that he can’t move back down south as he has his own demons that he is running from.
After asking her to stay, she declines, stating that once she moves, she knows her stalker will go away. Roman becomes suicidal and with only two weeks left before Lucy moves, she wants to spend as much time with him as possible but he becomes despondent, and pushes her away, consuming exorbitant amounts of alcohol. When he passes out one night, his rifle in his hand, the local sheriff has him flown to the nearest hospital so he can recover. Lucy takes all of the money she had saved to move south and spends it on a plane ticket to be with Roman. At the hospital, she tells him that she can’t live without him, and he her, and he proceeds to tell her that they will move south together.
With very little money, they pack up their snowmobiles and head off on the long trek home. On their journey, they come across a polar bear but when Lucy tries to shoot him, Roman stops her, telling her that he can talk to bears and they him. With a big storm moving in, they find shelter at an abandoned military base but during the night, Lucy’s stalker appears again, threatening her, and when she completely freaks out, Roman grabs their stuff and blows the facility up, proving to her, once and for all, that her stalker is dead and gone. As they continue their excursion south, they set up camp for the night, where a series of unfortunate events occur, forever changing the course of their lives.
The movie takes two vastly disparate and volatile lives, and intertwines them in a location thousands of miles from anywhere, where anything can, and often does, happen. Both Lucy and Roman have different dreams and goals but they cannot attain them without each other, which becomes a conundrum, as there are times when they cannot stand to be around each other. Watching them work through their emotions and deep-rooted childhood trauma, just so they can be together, is inspiring, and you root for them, because at the end of the day, none of us are flawless, and the more the story unravels, the more you you realize that they are not just perfect for each other, but were meant to be together, in spite of their faults.
When Lucy and Roman both come to this conclusion, you find yourself fully immersed in the characters and hope and pray that they will make it to their destination where they will be able to settle down together and make a life for themselves but the universe, fate would have it, has other pans for them. The fact that we are never told very much about their pasts, and what elements from it, continue to haunt them today, especially Lucy, actually works for the story. Many times we are told straight up what their pasts consist of but here, the not knowing actually adds an extra layer of mystery to a story that is already shrouded in secretiveness. Tatiana Maslany and Dane DeHaan work perfectly off each other, delivering superb, nuanced performances, eclipsed only momentarily by Nicolas Bolduc’s breathtaking cinematography, and Kim Nguyen’s deft direction. I can’t remember the last time I rooted so much for a couple to succeed, and this is a testament not only of both actors’ excellent characterizations but of writer/director Kim Nguyen’s ethereal and slightly unconventional vision.
Now available on DVD & Digital HD
