Blue Valentine
Cinema Nova, 28/12/2010
Status: Behind by 4 films
Blue Valentine is brave and bold and unconventional, but it is also fairly significantly flawed. I feel like I’m giving it four stars for effort in some ways, but still, four stars it is.
Told in parallel story lines set (and shot) six years apart, Blue Valentine charts the falling in and out of love of Cindy (MICHELLE WILLIAMS) and Dean (RYAN GOSLING). This is what the rom-coms don’t want you to see: what happens when romance dries up.
Williams is particularly great but Gosling - while very good - is at times a little too unrestrained, becoming overbearing where he is supposed to be charming. Although, perhaps that’s not so much him as the direction by DEREK CIANFRANCE who strives for naturalism through improvisation which, unfortunately, just made me more aware that I was watching actors.
All this makes it seem like I don’t like it, doesn’t it? I did, though. I liked the way it’s steeped in indie-quirk (not quite indie-cool) and the way the mood – as well as Cindy – journeys from fluffy romance to something darker and more earth-bound. It’s certainly not an easy film to watch, but what it is is compelling.
