In 'Lars,' comedy not played for laughs

In a perfect moviegoing world, audiences would know what’s in store for them. Films marked ‘‘comedy’’ would be surefire Saturday night date fodder. Action movie fans would rise up in arms if ‘‘Die Hard 4’’ turned out to be a tear-jerker.

But moviegoers should know that with ‘‘Lars and the Real Girl,’’ a genre-defying, psychological, black comedy-drama that opens Friday, all bets are off.

‘‘What I like about it is there is no obvious place to laugh in this film,’’ said the director, Craig Gillespie, fresh from last month’s Toronto Film Festival, where ‘‘Lars’’ received a standing ovation. ‘‘It’s really personal. Somebody said to me, ‘I was laughing when people were crying, and crying when people were laughing.’ I think you can put your own personal projections into it.’’

The distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is spinning the film as a ‘‘heartfelt comedy.’’ The trailer — essentially a compilation of every potential laugh line, and set to a jaunty score — sells the film as straight-up farce.

‘‘I think [the studio] leans more on the humor so people don’t shy away from the material,’’ said Gillespie.

But ‘‘Lars’’ actually takes on more tricky moviegoing territory. Ryan Gosling stars as Lars Lindstrom, ‘‘a lovable introvert whose emotional baggage has kept him from fully embracing life,’’ according to the film’s press material. So he embraces a doll.

The only relationship Lars can handle ends up being with Bianca — a full-size, anatomically correct sex doll, whom he introduces as his new girlfriend to his brother Gus (Paul Schneider), his sister-x in-law Karen (Emily Mortimer), and his small town.

Should the audience cringe? Take the premise seriously? Or, as viewers were expected to do at Gillespie’s bigger debut film this year, ‘‘Mr. Woodcock,’’ explode with a good old Hollywood guffaw? That uncharted middle ground is right where Gillespie wants us.

The 40-year-old Australian, who cut his filmmaking teeth directing TV spots for H&R Block, Chevrolet, and Citibank, said he worked hard to find the right tone in this modest, $12 million film — and steered clear of that safe and distancing ‘‘Isn’t mental illness funny?’’ shtick. For models, he looked not to contemporary films, but to older, riskier examples.

‘‘More from the ’70s, ‘Being There,’ ‘Harold and Maude,’ films that didn’t shy away from mixing drama and comedy together and having it be somewhat complicated,’’ Gillespie said, smiling warmly over drinks at a French restaurant in the Intercontinental Hotel.

Humorous moments in ‘‘Lars’’ would be inevitable, even ‘‘healthy,’’ he said. ‘‘However dire things are in a family, you have laughter to release tension.’’ But he felt no added responsibility for the material to be funny. ‘‘We always approached it dramatically, what his character would be going through and how people reacted to that and the awkwardness of that.’’ Gillespie eschewed music and other cues in favor of faith in the audience. ‘‘We don’t telegraph to audiences how to feel.’’

In what Gillespie called the ‘‘deliberately ambiguous’’ Midwestern town where Lars lives in his family’s garage, friends and townsfolk suspend their disbelief and go along with Lars’ delusion. Patricia Clarkson plays family doctor Dagmar, who suggests Lars has created the Bianca-as-real delusion as a way to work something out. ‘‘When will it be over?,’’ Gus the brother asks. ‘‘When he doesn’t need it anymore,’’ is her reply.

Accepting the delusion is the same jump audiences must make in order to swallow this quirky, coming-out-of-his-shell story, written by Nancy Oliver, of ‘‘Six Feet Under’’ fame. The silent blow-up doll, at first the source of comedy, becomes a character in itself. The film also stars Kelli Garner as the ‘‘real girl’’ and love interest vying with Bianca for Lars’ attention.

‘‘I thought it was going to be a tightrope act,’’ executive producer Bill Horberg said via telephone from Los Angeles. ‘‘It seemed like at first a premise that might be kinda snarky.’’ But, in Oliver’s hands, he believed the script went in the opposite direction — a journey toward the genuine. He had confidence that Gillespie, who at the time had not made a feature film, was the man for the job.

‘‘I looked at a reel of his commercial work which was funny and humanistic,’’ Horberg remembered. ‘‘I liked what he had to say about the materials, and he was in tune [with me] on the script.’’

TV ads humanistic? Gillespie, who also worked as an advertising-firm art director, said his 12-year stint directing ads was an ideal training ground.

‘‘You’ve got 30 seconds to tell a story. It’s a shorthand,’’ he said. He pointed to other directors who have made the successful leap from hawking deodorant to telling tales — Ridley Scott, Adrian Lyne, Michael Bay, Spike Jonze, Mike Mills, McG — even if some of their films can feel like two-hour ads.

‘‘I ended up doing commercials with actors who have [given] great performances,’’ he said, rebutting naysayers who might criticize his commercial work. ‘‘It’s all about people connecting.’’ Gillespie always wanted to do features. This film, he said, was ‘‘the road to get there.’’

What finally sold Horberg on Gillespie was the director’s first choice to play the lead: Gosling. ‘‘I thought that was a spot-on [casting choice],’’ Horberg said. ‘‘I have so much respect for Ryan, his ability to navigate a wide range of characters but also the way he can do that with truth and humanity.’’ Anyone who saw Gosling’s performance in ‘‘Half Nelson’’ would agree the actor has the range to pull it off.

As Horberg saw it, the goal of ‘‘Lars and the Real Girl’’ was to make audiences willing ‘‘to take the bend in the road’’ to that destination Oliver and Gillespie intended, connect with Gosling’s nuanced performance, and participate in Lars’ catharsis. ‘‘You care about the guy and what he’s going through,’’ Horberg said, that ‘‘letting go of his delusions and connecting with life at the end.’’

Ultimately, Bianca becomes a conduit to explore these issues, showing how we can and do tolerate each other’s insecurities, dysfunction, and frailties. ‘‘[The film is] really more about how people connect, love, how families interact,’’ said Gillespie. ‘‘Every family has its baggage.’’

In ‘‘Lars,’’ as in life, the truth is a blend of laugh-out-loud funny and pathos. And both are ambiguous.

‘‘What kind of relationship did Lars have with Bianca? Some in the audience say he never slept with her,’’ said Gillespie, relishing his film’s ambiguity and keeping his audience somewhat in the dark. ‘‘I love that.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.