FILM: Blue Valentine dir. Derek Cianfrance (2010)


Blue Valentine chronicles the relationship between Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) and portrays the all-too-realistic pain and anger that can come hand in hand with falling in love. Cindy is a quirky blonde who had fallen for the typical high-school jock character before Dean turned up with his ukulele, serenading her with the apt song 'You always hurt the ones you love'. The film switches between these early scenes of passionate attraction to the bleak final days of their relationship: stuck in a dead end job, Dean drinks and struggles with his anger as Cindy tries to balance her job, her daughter and her relationship. Gosling and Williams act the parts faultlessly and I was completely captivated by the characters as they fell in love with each other, and cried with them as it all fell apart. It is a deeply painful and endearing love story and it is almost relentlessly grim, so anyone hoping for a happy ending will probably want to give this one a miss. My only criticism would be that the story jumps from the captivating scenes of the couple falling in love to the brutal breakdown of their marriage without sufficiently showing how it got to that state. As a result, sympathy tends to fall with the loveable but slightly useless character of Dean, as he is neglected and snapped at by Cindy and yet the film seems to want to give the impression that each are mutually hurt and responsible for the failure of the relationship.

Dean and Cindy falling in love to the sound of the ukulele: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbk1l5_gp-I