A surprise in Toronto

The premise couldn't sound less promising: An oddball loner falls in love with an anatomically correct sex doll he orders over the internet.

Yet Craig Gillespie's "Lars and the Real Girl'' turns out to be sweet and emotionally generous -- and a terrific return to the screen for Ryan Gosling, who plays the title character (you can guess which one) with twitchy soulfulness.

Nancy Oliver's adept screenplay avoids the pitfall of its high concept by placing the tongue-tied Lars in a snowy Wisconsin town where church, bowling, and school board meetings are the stuff of everyday life. Everyone knows Lars is a little unusual, and even when he invites the "half Brazilian, half Danish'' doll named Bianca into his life, friends and family do their gosh-darnedest to go along with the story. And slowly, surely, and with plenty of laughs, we come to understand why Lars is emotionally frozen, and what it will take for him to thaw.

The towering Bianca - looking like a cross between Fran Drescher and Angelina Jolie -- is only part of the answer. Help comes, too, from Emily Mortimer as Lars's pregnant sister-in-law, Kelli Garner as the awkward worker in the next cubicle, and Patricia Clarkson as a pragmatic local doctor.

Without pressing the point, the movie recognizes that the strength of a community is in how it looks after its weakest members. It plays the Boston Film Festival soon before opening later in the year.