CINEMATIC Review

BLUE VALENTINE   ***

Derek Cianfrance

2010

IDEA:   A searing, painful look into an imploding marriage.

BLURB:   Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give shattering, heartbreaking performances in this depressing marital drama of documentary-like realism. The camera focuses intently on their mournful faces, sometimes soft and other times helplessly enervated, interactions between them ranging from playful puppy love to acrid and uncomfortable sex-fueled spars. And it doesn’t pull back: as an audience of cinemagoers, we become the fly-on-the-wall voyeurs to this tortuously disintegrating relationship, and Cianfrance has the meticulous attention focused exactingly on Cindy and Dean the whole way through. As we watch the fractured timeline of their meeting, their dating, and their all too inevitable falling out, we see people who simply weren’t meant for each other, but lack the insight to understand it. While not perfect or particularly revelatory itself, Blue Valentine strikes the hurting chords of people with the power to hurt each other. Love isn’t so easy, they learn. And theirs – if it even existed – wasn’t built to last.