James Gray Disowns His First Three Films, Calls ‘Two Lovers’ His First Real Movie

I've been saying it for years: "Two Lovers" is James Gray's best movie. Now it sounds like Gray might agree with me.

At a career Q&A at the London Film Festival this morning, the audience watched a clip from the film, and Gray told them it was the first time he'd had real creative control as a director: "the work took on another character."

He didn't stop there. Gray was pretty blunt about the three films that came before it, "Little Odessa," "The Yards" and "We Own the Night"

I don't regard the films I made before this very highly. I hope people like them, but I don't think of them as truly mine.

"Two Lovers" was different. It cost around $9.5M, nobody interfered, the actors were great, and he got to make exactly the movie he wanted. It's the first one he feels actually reflects who he was trying to be as a filmmaker.

I wrote something similar when it came out. Gray's earlier films always felt a bit weighed down by déjà vu to me, although they weren’t as bad as Gray claims they were — the car chase scene in “We Own the Night” is astounding — but "Two Lovers" was the one where he broke free and showed how good he really is.

If you haven't seen it, Joaquin Phoenix plays Leonard, a fragile man who moves back in with his parents in Brighton Beach after a bad breakup. His parents nudge him toward Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of a family friend, but he's more interested in Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), the beautiful and unpredictable woman who lives upstairs. Gray wrote it with Ric Menello, loosely drawing on Dostoevsky's "White Nights" and Visconti's 1957 film version.

At the time, this was supposed to be Phoenix's last movie. I said back then that I hadn't seen a better performance all year, and I meant it. He's hypnotic as Leonard and gives the role a stunning vulnerability. My fear was that his offscreen stunts would bury what might be his best work. Luckily he didn't quit acting, and he and Gray reunited for "The Immigrant" a few years later. Still, "Two Lovers" is the purest version of what those two can do together.

Shaw and Paltrow take just as many risks. There's a scene where Paltrow flashes Leonard from her window across the courtyard, and that one moment tells you everything about how much anger both of them are carrying.

Gray can be hit or miss for me. But when he's on, like in "Two Lovers" or "The Lost City of Z," there's a strange, haunting beauty in every frame. The sad part is that the freedom he had on "Two Lovers" didn't last. Harvey Weinstein buried "The Immigrant" after Gray wouldn't make the cuts he wanted. Fox recut "Ad Astra," and Gray has since disowned it. Looking back, "Two Lovers" feels like a short window when nobody was in his way.

Gray is in London this year with "Paper Tiger," which screened last night. Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller star in the crime drama, set in Queens in 1986, about two brothers who get mixed up with the Russian mafia. It might be one of Gray's three or four best movies.