Ruby Sparks

Overview

There's nothing like having a film's images and energy follow you as you leave the cinema and go about your day or having a specific scene creep up on you and make you laugh out loud in public. It's a special film that continues to reappear to the viewer after the credits roll, and that happened to me with Ruby Sparks.

This is an impressive debut screenplay from Zoe Kazan, who also plays Ruby, and is directed by the married couple who brought us Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. With the same quirky joy to it, and many tender moments, its composition seems effortless. Ruby Sparks strikes a pitch-perfect balance between laughter, love, and heartbreak in sharing a fun, unbelievable love story. There's a lot to enjoy and have fun with in this film, starting with the plot.

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano, the mute son from Little Miss Sunshine) is a literary genius, except he doesn't like being called so. Modest, introverted, and socially anxious, Calvin's literary success came at a young age. Now his writer's block is causing added stress. Until he has a dream.

"You don't even get laid in your dreams, man? That's just sad," spits his older brother, Harry, played by Chris Messina, after Harry dreams of 'just talking' to a sweet redhead. But the relationship develops as Ruby, quite literally, springs to life, appearing in Calvin's kitchen. She's in love with Calvin, and although he adores her right back, and is writing again, he also feels uneasy loving a woman he imagines.

The tension between the typed page and reality starts to wreak havoc on Calvin's moral compass. Ordering Ruby to be happy, sad, clingy, or normal, he realises that to love and be with someone, you have to let them be a person themselves, not just the idealised elements of one. Dano and Kazan's performances are tender and solid, and they make an adorable couple (in real life as well as celluloid).

With elements of the Pygmalion myth and traces of Stranger Than Fiction, Ruby Sparks is beguiling, heartfelt, and innocently beautiful. Its enlivened by great cinematography, including wonderful internal shots of Calvin's typewriter, dreamy underwater scenes, and crisp colours and textures, especially when we visit Calvin's mother's rainforest home. Appearances from actors such as Steve Coogan, Elliott Gould, and Antonio Banderas are the cherries in this already delicious mix of a film.