A stolen glance, a passionate embrace, a music set montage of playful dates. These are all the 'hallmark' moments of the traditional Hollywood romance. But these moments are redefined, stripped back and then crushed in a subtle anguish in Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star as the flourishing/decaying couple Dean and Cindy whom meet, fall in love and then fall out of love, but what sets this apart from many other cookie cutter, run of the mill romances is the honesty, often brutally bleak and unflinching portrayal of human emotions.
Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which showed the end of the relationship at the beginning and the beginning of the relationship at the end, Blue Valentine starts with the fleeting hours of the couple, all the nasty elements that come from years of resentment and disappointment and then alters through a series of flashbacks to the first blooms of their romance, the sparks that fly through their first encounter. The film begin a rhythm of shifting from one time period to another, juxtaposing the sour present with the bittersweet past as the pair make a last ditch attempt at their fledging romance with a night in a motel, staying in the 'future room' (a symbol of their relationship and also the disillusion of what advance society would be). In one climatic scene we see Dean and Cindy in a final embrace, intertwined with the couple getting married, making the film all the more heartbreaking as we long for the past to be present again.
Ryan Gosling has been treading through indie waters for some time after the over sentimental swooning of The Notebook, shows why he is the go to guy for the thinking person's leading man, showing an impulsive sporadic nature, yet all the while maintaining a delicate tenderness. Michell Williams meanwhile has shown she can depict downtrodden yet spirited with uncanny astuteness in films such as Brokeback Mountain and Wendy and Lucy, she is at home in the independent film where she excels with vulnerable, raw, passionate performances.
Shot through with an accurate eye that still retains a dreamy aesthetic, without being overly mawkish, Derek Cianfrance creates a wholly believable picture of the fragility of love, his direction infringing on awkward angles and uncomfortable close ups, that the camera shows his two leads sometimes in uncomfortable lights should be praised for the realistic nature that it constructs and the authenticity that Gosling and Williams bring to their roles.
Blue Valentine may be a thorny watch to bear, but it is one that reminds us that beyond the Hollywood gleam, love stories, even those with moments of beauty and grace, do not always have happy endings. We must remember that love is a many splintered thing and can only hope that we can weather the storm and keep it alive.
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