If it happens to be date night and you and your fancy fancy seeing a run of the mill cinematic chestnut of romance and will they/won’t they, with two leads garnering Golden Globe nominations for their performances, then waste your money on Love and Other Drugs. And make the most of sitting in the back row. Blue Valentine is not for you. It may be gentle and humble, but also honest and pathetic, and lives squarely up to its downcast title.
Written and directed by indie Wunderkind Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine is the tale of Dean and Cindy, how their marriage falls apart, and how they fell in love in the first place. This spliced structure is a steady slow burner, but so skillfully executed that its mirrored shots and tonal shifts play out beautifully. But what truly makes this story so engaging is how honest it is in its depiction of a contemporary couple.
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are exceptional as the ephemeral couple, their delicate love story marked with a simmering chemistry all the more potent given they never met prior to filming, worked unrehearsed and most of their scenes were shot in one take. Gosling’s Dean is a dropout and dreamer, but so charming and caring you can understand why Cindy swoons. It’s love at first sight for him, and he woos her with a combination of bravado and luck, entrancing William’s Cindy. She’s a med student growing up surrounded by her parents’ loveless marriage, her choices questionable and fallible.
If their romance radiates, its dissolution is all the more bitter. Several years on and things aren’t looking quite so dreamy for Dean and Cindy, with a last-minute Valentine’s tryst looking like their only chance to pull it back together. What makes the severing of their lives so engaging is that both of them are to blame and neither is guilty. No infidelities, just the wholeness of time. If you fall in love at first sight, what happens when you get to know each other?
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