It's the time of year when the producers of certain smaller, less ballyhooed films that still would like some "for your consideration" love--from the critics, from the Oscars and Globes voters, and really just from "the town"--screen them in tidy and rather discreet gatherings. One such this week was MGM's Lars and the Real Girl, produced by Sidney Kimmel (who was presented Wednesday in an empathetic New York Times profile as the patron saint of not-quite-lost cinema causes) and directed by relative newcomer Craig Gillespie (though he's a much-awarded commercial director and got a decent reception for his Mr. Woodcock).

On hand to introduce the film, which was made for just $12 million but grossed a deflating $6 million, was Peter Berg, a co-producer through his friendship with the more hands-on Sarah Aubrey, and turning up to lend his imprimatur during the drinks session afterwards was Michael Mann. Mann's seemingly become a mentor to Berg, who shares his filmmaking brio and, with efforts like Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom, is showing that like his mentor he's always got an idea in his head to go along with a real visual elan.

After asking that the ambient classical music ("Disturbing") be turned off, Berg drolly spoke of his transformation from skeptic as regards the film's love story co-starring an inflatable sex toy ("Why is that a good idea?") to happily hoping to cadge some credit.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern called the film "nothing less than a miracle...an endearing, intelligent and tender comedy...a movie about kindness and, "on its own modest terms, an almost perfect movie with flawless performances."

The evening was really about a quietly celebrating Ryan Gosling, who even amidst that array of performances stands out. "His Lars is simply rooted in every moment," said Morgenstern, while EW's Lisa Schwartzbaum wasn't sold on the movie but wrote, "I think we put up with Lars at all only because Gosling has such an affinity for the wounded boy birds he tends to play [perhaps most notably, last year's Half Nelson] that it's easy to watch him do his thing." The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan found the film that rarity, "the best possible version of itself," and credited Gosling's portrayal for its "unwavering, unblinking sincerity."

What's amusing in that context is that Gosling, who amiably chatted with all who sought him out, has more than a little devil in him. Wry, with eyes that communicate both a twinkle and an assessing braininess, he seemed glad to renew acquaintances with an admiring Jon Voight ("I'm gonna be too humble if I talk with him," said the normally not humility-afflicted older actor, launching into an entertaining shaggy-dog story about wanting to be a painter before he fell among a pair of charlatan artists while hitching a ride).

Gosling, who won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor for Half Nelson (and was nominated for an Oscar), and would be nominated just a day after the screening by the Broadcast Critics for Best Actor for his Lars performance, clearly taking pride in his work but doesn't seem to let ego or the crasser kind of ambition get in his own way. He's feisty in service of his brand of acting truths. He said all the correct things about Peter Jackson and his upcoming The Lovely Bones, but the bottom line was they parted ways over what was apparently a shared opinion that Gosling, even with a beard and a weight gain, couldn't convincingly play the character's age in the prestige project. And he was said to have had conflicts with co-star Rachel MacAdams while shooting The Notebook before they then became, for a while, a couple.

It's a measure of his contrarian streak that he would even essay the Lars role. Gosling says he knew from his first meeting with Gillespie, who announced he planned to treat the sex doll with total respect--"I said, `I'll shoot her like an actress who has a nudity clause in her contract,' Gillespie told me - that such respect would enable his performance. Says Gosling: "There was a real reverence, she was never manipulated, never made the butt of a joke. I saw some of the crew sidle up and talk to her, but"--her he demonstrated by half turning away and muttering--"so gently."

Although the film's production notes report that Gosling even slept a few nights in his character's shabby, chilly garage apartment, the actor says he eschews abstruse method rituals. "I've heard about people who just become the character--I'm always really jealous because that sounds like a lot of fun--but that's not me." Rather, he said, "You just find in yourself those qualities you need for the character, and turn up the volume on them."

Gillespie says he was flabbergasted at how well Gosling met the first week's challenge--shooting in quick succession all the scenes that take place over some months in Lars's job environment. Those scenes--the office is an over lit, drab, Dunder-Mifflin kind of place--had to be completed for production reasons in the first four of the film's 31 shooting days. "What happens in the office runs the gamut of the character," says Gillespie, "An entire arc, from when he first gets the idea of ordering the doll down to the scene of resuscitating Margot's teddy bear." He just did them, brilliantly, with that honesty to the character he has. There was no scene in the picture, even those that I thought were just connective tissue, he didn't make special."

There was one crucial scene in former Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver's script--and readers planning to see the film are herby given a SPOILER ALERT through the end of this paragraph-- that called for Lars to take the moribund Bianca to the shore of a lake. Grilled by Gosling, Gillespie vowed, "I won't get in your space--I'm shooting it from across the lake." The scene, like several other key ones in the film, is heavily ambiguous, and Oliver ran up to Gosling afterwards demanding, `"Did you just drown her?" His response was, "I don't know--did I? You wrote the script."

In fact, Oliver, who write the north country fable some six years ago when she was on the verge of quitting the business -until Six Feet Under came along--saw another scene set in a bathtub subtracted from the shot list, as Gosling and Gillespie grew ever more protective of the doll's purity and what that meant to Lars.

That said, Gosling can laugh about it now. (SPOILER coming). When his sister and her friends saw the film, recalls Gosling, they were outraged at the films concluding take on the emotional progress Lars has made. My sister said, "I can't believe Lars hits on Margot at Bianca's funeral." I told them, "Hey, did you know she's just a doll?"

(Craig Gillespie and Ryan Gosling on set)