Two Lovers and a Bear movie review (2016)

Which brings us to the talking bear.

Early on in the film, when DeHaan’s character, Roman, is out with his rifle for a little late-night, drunken target practice, a regal and serene polar bear saunters over softly and starts talking to him. His voice is that of veteran Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, who was so heartbreaking as Julie Christie’s husband in “Away From Her,” and his tone is soothing and familiar – even a little playful in a smart-alecky way. But rather than freak out upon the arrival of a talking bear, as anyone would, Roman talks back.

“I can talk to bears,” he later explains matter-of-factly to his girlfriend, Maslany’s Lucy. As a narrative device, it’s a risky and potentially alienating choice. But as a bit of magical realism, Nguyen doesn’t go to it often enough to create the desired disarming effect. The result is more of a “Huh?” than a “Wow!” He accomplishes more with the straight-up sense of realism he establishes within this harsh but oddly hopeful setting.

Roman and Lucy are young, in love and scraping by with barely-paying jobs. They spend their days ice fishing and cheering snowmobile races and their nights drinking whatever alcohol they can get their hands on when supply shipments arrive by plane. Nguyen drops us right in and efficiently depicts who these people are and what their life together is like.

But their frozen frolicking comes to an abrupt end when Lucy announces she’s gotten into a university biology program down South. She says she’s leaving in two weeksand wants him to join her. Roman insists he can’t go back there again – he can’t face what drove him up north in the first place.

After a series of deeply emotional highs and lows, the two decide to pack up their things, load up their snowmobiles and head out to the middle of nowhere to see how they are together with no distractions. Here’s where “Two Lovers and a Bear” really picks up steam with the possibility that anything could happen in the wild. But as it becomes increasingly clear, neither of them can escape the abuses of their pasts, no matter how far they run. Lucy seems like the more stable of the two but Roman has the big-picture vision that inspires their journey; all they need is each other, they think, but what they really need is psychological help.