Blue Valentine

A poignant story about falling in and out of love, Blue Valentine is unflinching but not completely without romanticism as it depicts a young couple’s struggle to remember all the reasons they ended up together.

Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) fall for each other on their first date, with a rosy future of starry-eyed dreams lying before them. When Cindy soon falls pregnant, the soon-to-be parents embrace the happy accident with all the optimism that youth allows. Several years later they find themselves plummeting fast from the comfort of their idealistic clouds and come crashing down to earth by the gravity of woeful reality.

Shifting back and forth between their happy early days and their present-day troubles and quarrels, director Derek Cianfrance offers a stark contrast that holds no punches when it comes to the highs and lows of romance. It is in their darkest moments that the film’s stars shine, with Williams’ bleak performance of an eternally exhausted wife and mother earning her an Oscar nomination, whilst Gosling also delivers as the unrealistic husband who fails to face up to life’s harsher truths.

Built on layer upon layer of melancholy, with the occasional moment of warmth spliced in between, Blue Valentine works as the film equivalent to a funeral, complete with unrelenting tears and long unreachable happy memories. Together Williams and Gosling bring a great depth of emotion to a story that mourns the inevitable loss of love in a once blissful marriage, one that isn’t always easy to watch but is definitely worth the time.

Luke Woellhaf