James Gray’s Two Lovers, loosely based on a Dostoyevsky short story,  offers up the most penetrating examination of male immaturity American cinema has seen since Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love.

Beginning with a suicide attempt by Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), it  depicts the thirtysomething Brooklynite’s life with his parents. After a nasty break-up, he’s retreated back to the comfort of their home. They push him towards Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of a business associate, but he’s more attracted to  neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow). However, Michelle is prone to self-destructive behavior like passing out in nightclub bathrooms and carrying on an affair with a married man. Gray explores one of his favorite   themes: family life as a seductive trap. Unlike his first three films, Two Lovers is not a genre exercise, but it’s no less dark or moody because none of its characters packs a gun or works for the Mafia.

Spout talked to Gray in New York earlier this week, where he proved to have plenty to say about Dostoyevsky, Brighton Beach and why his films are more popular in France than the U.S.

How closely is Two Lovers adapted from Dostoyevsky?

I think a better term would be “inspired by.” I don’t think it’s close at all, although it has certain similarities. Leonard has the spirit of Dostoyevsky. You can’t really adapt Dostoyevsky literally. Or you can, but it usually comes out poorly. First of all, his main characters tend to be very dysfunctional. If you’re making a film set in the present day, they’d almost certainly be marginalized as mentally ill and given a whole host of pharmaceuticals. Right then and there, you have an issue. His characters are very internal, but narrative is external. In order to adapt Dostoyevsky, you have to graft his spirit onto something  else. Two Lovers is kind of a combination of White Nights with Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away and my personal stuff, all mixed together. I hope the essence of Dostoyevsky is captured. Taxi Driver is probably the best example of that. Scorsese, de Niro and Schrader did Notes From Underground perfectly in 1976. Travis Bickle is Raskolnikov and the Underground Man.

Do you see it as important or incidental that Leonard is torn between a blonde WASP and a woman who’s also Jewish?

I did not do that by accident. What I was trying to do there was use a cultural convention to emphasize the fickle, almost immature nature of desire. Our desire is based so clearly on superficial elements outside what a person really is. Leonard’ s lack of attraction to Sandra is probably connected to the fact that her parents are pushing her on him and that she comes from the same community. His attraction to Michelle is based on equally superficial elements. So I was trying to say that the nature of desire leaves us grappling with our projections of other people.

What attracts you to Brighton Beach as a location? You’ve used it three times so far.

Well, that’s a very good question. It has the surface texture of urban life. The layers of Brooklyn are fabulous. You can sense the history of the community. Brighton Beach is so ugly that it’s beautiful. History is an accumulation of detail, and I want to make a film with a sense of it. There’s also the ocean, and what it represents in cinematic and visual terms. It’s ripe for shooting. It’s a slightly exaggerated version of my childhood neighborhood in Queens. I hope I have enough distance to shoot it right, but not enough that it ceases to be personal.

What keeps bringing you back to the theme of people being trapped by their families?

In a certain respect, I suppose my shrink would be a better person to ask. What fascinates me about family life is the complexity and elemental nature of the relationships, Inside every family is the potential for tremendous emotional support and destruction. Let me give you an example. I grew up in a house where my dad, with whom I’m now quite close, kept saying “Don’t try to be a filmmaker.” He said “We’re not rich, we don’t have connections, we’re not from Hollywood. You’ll never make it.” He had my best interests in mind, but he was wrong. I made it. There was both support and obstruction there. Conflict is inherently dramatic. The first person you meet is your mother. The Greeks figured this out thousands of years ago. I’m hoping to make films that will stand up 50 years from now.

Do you feel that there’s something you can speak about more directly in a love story than a thriller, like your earlier films?

Yes, because you don’t have to rely on the genre machinery. Either adhering to genre rules or breaking them, you still have to acknowledge them. You have to pay attention to who’s the bad guy. I found the experience of making this film really liberating and made the most personal film I could. I didn’t have to worry about gunplay or staging action scenes. Filming the car chase in We Own The Night was one of the most boring things you could possibly do. I came to the set and Joaquin was there. I said “Action!” and he blinks. I said “Cut.” Then we turn around and do a shot of a car wheel. Then the next shot is Joaquin looking over his shoulder. They’re a bunch of fragments pieced together. There’s no way to be surprised by it. Letting go of that was liberating. Also, you have more screen time with these characters when they’re not shooting at each other.

What attracted you to genre in the first place?

This is the truth. Two Lovers is the least autobiographical film I’ve made. My dad worked at a place which made subway parts for the city of New York. That became The Yards. Growing up, I knew a lot of Russian gangsters. That went into Little Odessa and We Own the Night. I have a stepbrother who’s a cop. That went into We Own the Night. The characters are based on people I knew. With this film, I kept it personal and shed the autobiographical. You might not buy this, but I never conceived of my first three films as genre films. They were very personal. The answer really is that I thought about it as an autobiographical form of expression. It seems weird, as if my life was like a ‘70s gangster film, but it’s true.

Why do you think your films have been better received critically in France than in the U.S.?

I really don’t know. With this one, it might be changing. Let’s face it. There’s one of two possibilities. The first is that I suck and the French are all wrong. They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. The other one is that sometimes it takes a degree of cultural distance to assess the work. If you went through the history of cinema, you’d find that Clint Eastwood and Nicholas Ray were first discovered by the French. It’s not that Americans don’t get me or are stupid. Americans embraced Fellini before Italians did. Japanese thought Kurosawa was a poseur. I’m not trying to compare myself with them. I’m just saying that we can’t judge work that’s too close. I’d leave it to you, because I simply don’t know the answer. What do you think it is?

I think that there are certain aspects of your films that recall ‘70s American cinema and bring a personal touch to genre tropes, which French critics appreciate.

The Village Voice critics’ poll is probably filled with European and Asian cinema. With my work, there’s no cultural distance. Americans write brilliantly about films you’ve never heard of. Film Comment writes well about Hou Hsiao-hsien. I think Kurosawa’s a genius, but he was ridiculed in Japan. They thought he was an Americanized sell-out, to the point where George Lucas and French producers had to help him make films. This situation is not unique to me by any means. If you were to go back and read Pauline Kael’s original review of Raging Bull or Vincent Canby’s review of The Godfather Part II, it’s meaningless now. When Apocalypse Now came out in 1979, it got reviews saying “The ending is a pretentious muddle.” Now almost everyone thinks it’s a masterpiece. Sometimes, distance is required. Or maybe I completely suck.