The film tells two sides of the coin of a relationship: its joyful beginning and its ugly ending. Jumping back and froth between the two narratives, the beginning finds a care-free, but emotionally intense Dean (Ryan Gosling), working for a moving company. Meanwhile, Cindy (Michelle Williams) is an aspiring medical student living at home with her parents, who have an extremely contentious relationship thanks to her father's anger issues, and her elderly grandmother. She is currently in a failing relationship with Bobby Ontario (Mike Vogel), when by happenstance while visiting her grandmother at some old-folks home, she runs into Dean who is moving in an elderly man into the home. For Dean it is love at first sight, and despite striking out the first time around, Dean's persistence eventually pays off with a night about town with Cindy. When Cindy learns she is pregnant with a child that is almost certainly not Dean's, their budding new relationship is tested. Dean ultimately remains supportive, and after Cindy stops midway through an abortion procedure, Dean proposes the two get married and become a family.
The latter narrative chronologically shows us the state of the relationship some six or seven years later. The two are raising their young daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka), and while they both obviously love her very much, their love for one another has seemed to evaporate. After finding their lost dog dead, they drop-off Frankie at Cindy's father's house, while they bury the dog in their yard. Feeling the need to leave the house and put a spark back in their marriage, Dean proposes, and then insists despite Cindy's reluctance, that the two go away for the night to a cheap love motel. The idea turns out to be a complete disaster, as the couple end up arguing and bickering at one another the whole night instead of patching things up. When Cindy gets called in to the doctor's office she works at early in the morning, the note she leaves behind to explain her whereabouts is not satisfactory to Dean's liking. Still extremely angry over the previous night's events, Dean goes the the office in order to confront Cindy. This leads to a very public and disturbing confrontation between the couple, that leads Dean to punch Cindy's boss, leading to her firing. This is the last straw in a doomed relationship, as Cindy demands divorce after the ugly incident.
The film does a mostly succinct job of portraying the relationship's whirl-wind beginnings, and unavoidable disastrous ending: a relationship that's a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. The dialogue between the to characters is particularly strong, never feeling inauthentic. Between the two narratives though, I definitely preferred the falling-in love storyline to the falling-out of love tale. Cianfrance perfectly captures the exciting spontaneity of Dean and Cindy's new relationship, and these lighter moments are when the film is at its best. The film's stern break-up parable though is where it goes off track a bit. While no single event or line feels out of the realm of possibility, at times the film revels too much in it's pity for my taste, trapping it into melodramatic tropes that always remind me why I generally don't like the genre. It's a tough line to walk no doubt, and compared to some of its modern contemporaries it does a decent job of the balancing act, but unfortunately it does not stay completely clear of wallowing in its own grief.
The other problem with the film that keeps from being the home-run hit it might have been is the too stark contrast between the narratives. Now it is true that some years have passed between the storylines, but without seeing the evolution of the two characters, especially in the case of Dean, it's hard to connect the two versions of the same human being. The result is an emotional distancing between the two narratives, causing a compartmentalization that hold's the film back from delivering the devastating emotional punch it is meant to. While I was always interested in what was happening on the screen, I was strangely aloof to the final fate of these tragic lovers.
The lack of sympathy though had everything to do with story, and not with acting, as the two lead performances that have garnered the film the attention it has received are both superb. Michelle Williams portrays a young woman without much direction, scared to take any step she might not be able to take back (a fear likely imbedded into her by her contentious surroundings as a child), until the point of exhaustion where she can no longer put up with the untenable living situation. Ryan Gosling meanwhile brings to life Dean, and interesting romantic who at the outset seems to being an easy-going fellow, but inside harbors deep emotional longings and obsessions that cause him to act irrationally and out of his best interests. Out of the two performances, while Williams was the one to receive the Oscar nomination, I actually preferred Gosling turn. Now don't get me wrong, both performances are great and deserving of award consideration, but Gosling's manic-depressive Dean is easily the most memorable part of the film for me.
Not quite the powerful punch in the gut that some have built it up to be, "Blue Valentine" is still a worthwhile journey into the makings and destruction of a combustible relationship. If there is a lesson to the tale, I would say that it is that any romantic relationship based upon one individual's worshiping the other, will not last. It is an interesting moral, and if this sounds like the type of study that would fascinate you, it is definitely worth checking out.
Rating: 8/10
Christopher Lominac
You have me intrigued with this reveiw. I will try to go and see this movie next week after work. I like Bri.an Goslings acting in the few I have seen him in. I will let you know what I think after I see it
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