The first trailer for Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut was released today, and it’s quite the mindfuck. It’s hard to tell what’s going on here, thought Gosling is clearly going for a David Lynch-style mix of the surreal, dreamlike and visually arresting.
Lost River tells the story of Billy (Christina Hendricks) and her two sons, who live in a town that was once flooded to create a reservoir (and is rumored to be haunted/cursed because of this fact). When Billy’s house faces the threat of foreclosure, she takes a job in what appears to be some kind of sex-and-gore cabaret club alongside Gosling’s baby mama Eva Mendes (or as she is known in some corners of our office, “Ebae Mendes”). More weird and sinister things go down, though it’s hard to make heads or tails of it from the trailer. Which may be why the film received mostly negative reviews after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival last year.
Still, let us not forget that Ryan Gosling dances salsa and thus has been afforded 7 Get Out Of Jail Free cards in my book:
Official synopsis of ‘Lost River’ below:
In the fictional urban wasteland of Lost River — actually today’s Detroit, where the movie was shot — single mom Billy (Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks) is a part-time waitress raising her two sons, teenage Bones (Iain De Caestecker, the Scottish actor on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and a toddler. Bones likes the girl next door, Rat (Saoirse Ronan), so-called because her other closest friend is a large, amiable rat named Nick. This part of Lost River is ruled by a bully named Bully (ex-Dr. Who Matt Smith); he patrols the neighborhood in a convertible with an upholstered chair mounted on the back seat and shouts through a bullhorn, “Welcome to Bully Town.”