Film

Gosling continues his winning streak of strong roles in smart films (The Believer, Half Nelson, Fracture), showing his talents here as both a terrific character actor and appealing leading man. In this quirky, beguiling comedy scripted by Six Feet Under’s Nancy Oliver, he plays a reclusive, churchgoing office worker living next door to his brother Gus (Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karin (Mortimer). Lars’s undemanding routine is upset when a lonely new colleague (Garner) comes on to him, prompting him to surf the Internet for someone less threatening.

He finds her in Bianca, a life-size doll he introduces to his stunned family as “a missionary on sabbatical.” He’s so convinced Bianca is human that a sympathetic doctor (Clarkson) finds the only way to treat his delusion is to persuade his community to go along with it. Watching the group adopt the mannequin as one of its own is deliciously weird and also deeply moving: These small-town Midwesterners meet the challenge of their traditional beliefs with humor, compassion, ingenuity and grace.

In just his second feature, director Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock) strikes a delicate balance between the comic and tragic. He reveals Lars’s early trauma without fanfare, and orchestrates Gus’s anger into an expression of survivor guilt. But ultimately it’s Gosling and Clarkson’s movie; their tango to the precipice of madness and back grounds this surreal comedy in a humanism that’s totally authentic.