Although there are more than a few people who have criticized Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River since its premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival, his filmmaking friend Nicolas Winding Refn is apparently still on his side, calling the movie "a beautiful, beautiful great movie that will stick with people."
Vulture got the filmmaker's opinion on his buddy's film when they caught the filmmaker during the Cannes closing night dinner, where he served in the festival's jury this year. In addition to what he said above, Refn went on to note that "the film will grow on people" and that "there are images from it that still stick with me."
In particular, Refn noted that he thought the film's mother/son relationship between Christina Hardwick and Iain De Caestecker's characters was exemplary, and that he was particularly taken by Ben Mendelsohn's performance, who played a creepy dancing, singing owner of an usual night club.
When noted that Gosling seemed to take a lot of elements from other filmmakers, including Refn himself in their similar use of red and ultra-violent bursts, the filmmaker considered this obvious. For, "because we're twins, we make the same movie. Separated at birth, we found each other. That's the thing about twins. We stick together."
Having premiered the similarly polarized Only God Forgives, starring Gosling, at last year's Cannes, Refn is no stranger to audience members being less than loving of his work. As such, perhaps that is what makes him and Gosling more like separate "twins" than anything else at the moment. At least Gosling can be comfortable at the moment knowing that his pal has his back still about his film while many others do not.
While Warner Bros. was supposed to distribute the film, its tepid response following its premiere has found the studio talking to independent distributors trying to persuade them to take the movie off their hands. As such, it is unclear at the moment when audiences outside of the film festival circuit will be able to see the movie for themselves.