Blue Valentine

ABOVE: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in a scene from Blue Valentine.

BLUE VALENTINE
Dir. by Derek Cianfrance
Starring Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling

Marriage is said to be a union between two people that is meant to last for better or for worse (and in fact, Ryan Gosling reminds us of this in a memorable scene from the film). But what happens when the worst parts of a marriage drive a couple so far over the edge that they are forced to wonder why they married in the first place? The result is Blue Valentine, a very realistic examination of what can happen when a marriage occurs for the wrong reasons.

The film opens with Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) sending their daughter to stay with Cindy's father, so that they may have an evening alone. Dean wants to go to a sex motel but Cindy isn't feeling up to it. In the end, Dean makes a reservation regardless of what she wants, and the two buy some liquor and prepare for an evening of intimacy. What happens next is told in a series of flashbacks between what lead to their romance beginning and what leads to its eventual demise.

The best thing about this film is the way in which it never flinches from reality. This is a film about two very realistic people, in a very realistic situation, with a very realistic outcome. The fact that it does feel so real is what often makes the viewer uncomfortable throughout the film. Shot almost as though it's a documentary, we feel almost like flies on the wall as we gaze into the collapse of Dean and Cindy's romance.

Cindy is a nurse, who had great dreams to be a doctor before the birth of her daughter. Dean does small jobs as a house painter, devoting most of his time to being a family man. The problem with the family, is that the relationship between Dean and Cindy is not working, and what is most uncomfortable (and demonstrated through flashbacks) is that it never did in the first place.

Dean is a fun-loving and humourous man who has left his father in Miami and moved to New York to have fun and live life. Cindy is a fragile and uptight girl who is studying very hard to become a doctor so that she can leave her life and her two miserable parents behind her. She is also very promiscuous, and this trait is perhaps what leads her to Dean in the first place. Flashing back to the present, Cindy is trying to explore why Dean chooses not to make anything of his life, and Dean is a bit reproachful toward Cindy because of her continuing success as a nurse.

There is nothing that Cianfrance will not show us throughout the film. As audience members, we have a front seat to not only Dean and Cindy's moments of passion and intimacy, but also their vicious arguments and emotional attacks on each other.

There is, however, a fundamental problem with this film. It is certainly acted beautifully (particularly by Gosling, who gives the most memorable performance as Dean) and the dialogue never fails to sound completely genuine. The underlying issue with the film is the character of Cindy. Michelle Williams plays her unflinchingly as a woman who feels trapped in a marriage she may (or may not) realize that she never should have entered into. What's wrong is the way that Dean and Cindy are developed as characters. Gosling plays Dean as a fun loving man, and sprinkles some much needed humour into the film to take the heat off of some of the more intense scenes. Dean is a such a well rounded character, that Cindy comes across as unbalanced. There is some back story given into the marriage of Cindy's parent, but it s only hinted on briefly and never mentioned again. I feel as though the screenwriter's intention was to have Cindy demonstrate an incapability to love, as a result of her parent's endless squabbles. However, Cindy comes across as cold and bitter throughout the entire film. Placing that Cindy next to Gosling's light-hearted Dean, most of the issues in the relationship end up being Cindy's. This is not really a bad thing but in a movie about a failed marriage, I would have liked to see more blame being put on Dean as well so that when he is driven to do a horrible thing toward the film's conclusion (which pushes Cindy over the edge), we can feel bad for Cindy rather than still feel most of the pity for Dean.

Overall, it is a film worth seeing for those who appreciate a gritty drama acted supremely by Gosling and Williams.

3/4