A single mother is swept into a dark underworld, while her teenage son discovers a road that leads him to a secret underwater town. Lost River has all the right intentions and a talented cast of people like Eva Mendes, Christina Hendricks, Iain De Caestecker, Ben Mendelsohn, Saoirse Ronan and Matt Smith but first time director Ryan Gosling lacks the experience of what a great film needs and to be honest the movie does have some nice shots and Caestecker's perfomance aint that bad but the rest of the cast and the plot itself was kind of a letdown and Smith's role was super painful to sit threw. Overall the movie has some nice things but it's not as great as it could have been.

This is really a mess of a movie. It has a few interesting ideas, and some interesting but not always consistent imagery, but in the end fails to deliver on any of the questions it sets up. Like the "shows within the show" the movie seems most of the time to just do things for shock value and no other narrative purpose.If David Lynch had a totally incoherent dream (for David Lynch), this might be it. Lynch at least teases us with a feeling of connectedness and gives us some kind of ending. This movie fails to do either.The cinematographer should get credit for his sometimes striking visuals, but that's about all there is to this film.

Let's start by saying : I love this kind of films.OK, now that I say it, let's talk about the movie :it is the debut of Gosling as a director, and even when you can see clearly influences in his work, I will like to say that it have a character of it's own. I can only compare it with a mix between Tim Burton and David Lynch, two dark-film directors, but everyone with it's own style. The movie is an urban phantasmagorical fairy tale, a sad poetry of the suburbs and low life.I can't see something not perfect with this movie, it have a everything : perfect acting, perfect OST, perfect photography, deep characters. Only thing I did like to know more about the background of the characters, a bit more about their story, because I felt a lot of empathy with every one of them (even the twisted ones).I really want to see more Gosling's works, he have lot of potential as a director.(warning : this movie is not for everyone.)8,5/10

Ryan Gosling has worked before with of his greatest masters, Mr. Refn. With him, Gosling learned the importance of colors, movement and symbology of a film. With that in mind, Ryan made his first attempt as the Writer/Director of Lost River, a movie with a lot of images and colors to show, but it really is about nothing. Here, the director focuses a lot on showing allegories and symbols about the world and characters (e.g see how the reverse dynamic of blue-red colors/light works) but forgets to tell a cohesive and convincing story. In the end, the movie is all about Gosling trying to be the new Refn, but he fails to accomplish, since the latter at least knows how to tell a story.