Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine
2010
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling

Well, here we are. It's a new year. Meaning new movies and new reviews. I'm going to bring things up a notch or two this year. Maybe reviewing not just new movies I see, but continuing the judgment of every movie I see. Netflix is truly a beautiful thing. Adding pictures and certain details might also help in the spicing of this blogged out relationship.

Blue Valentine. One of the things I judge a movie on can be its trailer. It doesn't have to be awesome, it doesn't have be long. It just has to have that valor and sticking nature that a tease should have. Like a girl running her cool hands down a long arm, the tease should be enough to get interested and stay interested. Blue Valentine's trailer brought my attention to this film diving in to the realism of modern relationships.

(Photo from: joblo.com)

Focusing on a young couple married for about 5 years with a young daughter, this melodrama brings forth the true nature of how relationships have very high ups and very low downs. The chronology jumps back and forth from the time when they met to a point in their current relationship struggling to keep it together. Gosling portrays Dean, a job jumping non-high school graduate trying to keep his family together. His drinking is too heavy, and his jobs do not help the cause. His true nature of the character finds the audience lost in his eyes, smile, frown, and Stanley Tucci look from The Lovely Bones. Yet, he loves his daughter and his wife so deeply that he loses himself in the relationships to a point of a crumble.



Williams characterizes Cindy, a hard working nurse in a Gynecologist's office. She loves her husband and her daughter, but realizes that trying to keep them all together is nearly impossible. The film begins showing the awkwardly crazy relationship of the three people in their Pennsylvania home.

The story transcends the ultimate beauty of love and torture in a relationship. Bonds are built and broken from the shattered hearts of two individuals too damn blinded by the sanctity of their truth to one another. People wonder how love is never like a romantic comedy.

(Photo from: thejosevilson.com)

How come going to the library or coffee shop does not bring back that one true feeling? How come people have to work hard to find true love? And why do we have to work so damn hard to keep it once we have it?


The film boasts on realistic nature of relationships. Meeting someone, falling in love, being with them, and the ultimate show of affection and trust rearing its ugly, truthful head. The mind boggling connection between the two main characters in this gore fest of drama brings about the truth behind every relationship. It is impossible to be madly in love and happy for the entire course of a relationship. The problem with most romantic comedies is that they do not show what happens after that day in the park when the woman jumps in the man's arms. They do not show the toll that relationships take on people. They do not show the overwhelming frustration of wanting something, getting it, and losing it. This two hour love/hate fest brings our souls to a realistic and truthful stand still.

Stars (now out of 5, due to my overwhelming amount of time spent on my Netflix account): ***