Ryan Gosling may look sweet as maple syrup and smell like freshly cooked waffles, but don’t be fooled, beneath that Canadian exterior, he has some deep thoughts. Morbid ones, the kind you don’t think about when you’re playing double dutch with your nieces. One time he hit a tree with a dead cat. Mr. Goose’s directorial debut, Lost River, starring Christina Hendricks as a single mom who “stumbles upon a road that leads to an underwater town,” premiered at Cannes, where everyone mostly hated it.
It played again at SXSW this month, and now it has a three-minute preview, where Christina Hendricks peels her face off. Gosling has previously described his directorial style as a mix between two frequent collaborators Derek Cianfrance and Nicolas Winding Refn. Although watching it, the first shorthand that came to mind for me was David Lynch meets Gaspar Noe (mostly because of the music, which is “Shell Game” from Glass Candy). Basically, anyone who’s too hip to be bound by traditional narrative. Harmony Korine meets a basket of kittens?
Anyway, the film also stars Ben Mendelsohn, Saoirse Ronan, Eva Mendes, and Iain De Caestecker, and it opens in limited release April 10th. Hopefully it will hit VOD soon after, so I can watch underneath my custom Baby Goose Snuggie with a dozen rescue cats, all named “Ryan Gosling.” He would want it that way.