In the 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl, Lars falls in love with a doll.
The doll is named Bianca and is an anatomically correct RealDoll ordered from an adult website. Lars, played by Ryan Gosling, treats Bianca as a living woman and introduces her to his family, coworkers, and the people in his small town. His relationship with her is presented as romantic but nonsexual, reflecting his loneliness and difficulty forming ordinary social connections.
Rather than mocking Lars, the film’s characters gradually respond with empathy. His family takes Bianca to a doctor, who uses the situation to help Lars work through his emotional problems. The townspeople also include Bianca in activities, allowing Lars to build real relationships while he slowly becomes more comfortable with other people.
The story draws on the Pygmalion myth, in which a man falls in love with a statue that becomes a real woman. The film reverses that fantasy: Bianca never comes alive, but Lars’s emotional journey is real. A common mix-up is saying he falls in love with a real woman; the title’s “real girl” is deliberately ironic because Bianca is a lifelike doll.