As if the title isn't already an indication, ""Blue Valentine"" is quite depressing. The story will depress you, the performances will depress you and the lighting will depress you. This review will probably depress you by association. Needless to say, ""Blue Valentine"" isn't for the weak of heart, or anybody without a sufficient tissue budget. But for those who can take it, ""Blue Valentine"" is an absorbing and haunting love story of a relationship's beginning and end that won't be forgotten anytime soon.
That love story is told in two snapshots, both intertwined amongst each other. One shows college student Cindy (Michelle Williams) and aspiring musician Dean (Ryan Gosling) entering into a puppy-love romance culminating in an adorable little marriage. The other shows the couple six years later, with husband and wife struggling to even tolerate each other yet desperate to hold things together for the sake of their young daughter.
These portraits of Cindy and Dean's courtship and collapse paint a bleak picture of not only the couple, but marriage in general. Director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance frames the film's central story with numerous other failed relationships. Cindy's parents are shown fighting constantly, Cindy's grandmother discusses how she fell out of love with her grandfather and Dean reveals his mother left him and his father when he was just a young boy. In Cianfrance's world, marriage seems like a concept that is doomed to failure. Or at least it is in these families where emotional abuse is passed down from generation to generation until it becomes permanently cyclical.
The story is made all the more tragic by its youth storyline, which shows just how happy Cindy and Dean were before they collapsed into a world of passive aggression and withholding. With both of them coming from decaying communities and fractured families, each person looks like a refuge as the movie starts. Thankfully, Cianfrance and his actors are able to walk a shaky tightrope, making it understandable why these characters are attracted to each other, but also layering these scenes with clear indications that they are incredibly incompatible. Williams in particular is outstanding in her ability to bring an authentic level of vulnerability to her scenes of suffering, an especially tricky task with a character who tries to hide her anger as much as she can.
Gosling also performs well, despite the fact that the script doesn't give his struggles nearly as much depth. Particularly when interacting with Faith Wladyka, the actress playing the couple's daughter, Gosling is able to build a great rapport. But for many of the scenes between him and Williams as a married couple, he is pushed into a narrow white trash depiction that feels like overkill. It doesn't feel like a natural progression of his character, more like a quick out that Cianfrance, along with his co-writers Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis, use to make the conflict all the more obvious.
However, the central tragedy of ""Blue Valentine"" is no less harrowing for this misstep. The film will still rip out your soul and at least temporarily vanquish your romanticized notions of love. But it does so in such a beautiful way, it's hard to mind.
