TMC Reviews… Blue Valentine

by Dorset Apple

It’s the time of year when the average film-goer is awash with hard decisions (so that’ll be Oscar season then). Do I spend my hard earned on The King’s Speech so that I can praise Mr Darcy for his excellent stutter and state proudly, “The Queen Mum was sexy in her day. Dammit!”? Or is this Orange Wednesday to be spent with Black Swan? Kunis, Portman, cunning linguistics and tutus (it would appear to be a no-brainer, although both are brilliant in their own right).

But wait! Into the ring steps Blue Valentine, a grainy and glorious indie flick courtesy of relative newcomer Derek Cianfrance. It is a real, moving and at times, painful affair that owes a great deal to two brave performances from the film’s leads, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling.

Brilliantly portrayed, a romantic night out this isn’t. Showing, as it does, the heady early days of a relationship (wonderful) and the crushing, heartbreaking doom of the end of one (soul destroyingly bleak), it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. In many ways this is a film of startling convention; Cindy [Williams] and Dean [Gosling] meet, they fall in love, there’s a pregnancy, they get married and then, a few years down the line, things start to fall apart. So as a love story it isn’t setting the world alight with its originality, but the savagely shown breakdown of the traditional ‘boy meets girl’ template is fearless and brutal, and exactly where this film is surprising.

A scene where Dean books the pair of them into a seedy sex hotel, hoping for a romantic night that recaptures the tenderness and excitement of their early days, doesn’t quite come off. The dive that he opts for has the added appeal of themed rooms, and in ironically choosing ‘The Future Room’ – replete with rotating bed and spaceship dashboard (and nothing screams sex like a view of the earth from a galaxy far, far away…) – he is confirming exactly what this marriage lacks, a future. The botched sex scene clashes horribly with a tender example from their past and it begins to become clear that there is no salvation pending, no happy ending here.

The editing is excellent, effortlessly switching between the past and present. The evening they happen to meet, when Dean plays Cindy a song on his conveniently available ukulele and she tap-dances (adorably) along, is a highlight. As is the music, scored by Grizzly Bear on the whole, with Penny & The Quarters track ‘You and Me’ standing out as the lover’s theme.

Turning to the performances – and Gosling is exceptional – but Michelle Williams has my vote. As Cindy she demonstrates with utter conviction both the optimism of youth – as a pre-med student desperate to escape the fate of her housewife mother – and later on, having ‘made do’ with radiography and stifled, living the small town dream. There is nothing clinical about her performance; it is real, largely ad-libbed (notably in the fight scenes with Gosling) and heart breaking to watch. Williams has come out of this with an Oscar nomination (her second) and it’s totally deserved. As someone who has loved her since the heady days of Dawson’s Creek, when Jen’s sass and swagger made me look up from my post-school cereal, after this film she’ll have a few more converts. Because although Cindy may have relinquished her dreams to play the role of wife and mother, there is a steel there that is not to be eroded.

All in all, this is a wonderfully shot, wonderfully acted, unpretentious piece of cinema, and definitely worth a watch. Blue Valentine is still showing in select cinemas around London.