A tragic before-and-after tale of a relationship gone wrong by an acting powerhouse duo.
BLUE VALENTINE is a sad, dark tale tracing the crumbling relationship between Dean and Cindy, played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. The movie shifts back and forth in time, from their giddy Brooklyn-based courtship to five or six years later in rural Pennsylvania as parents to a six year old. Both actors are Academy Award-nominated, and both should be nominated again for their work here. Williams is my bet for a Best Actress Oscar win for her lovelorn, swept-off-her-feet young bride turned wounded and angry, ultimately hopeless working mom. Gosling’s tough-talking Dean morphs from handsome, charming and mysterious to a lost and all too vulnerable soul, eyes hidden, unkempt and balding. In both cases, all smiles transition to fleeting or no smiles at all.
In the chronologically latter half of their story, which is where BLUE VALENTINE both begins and ends, Dean insists on a romantic night out at a dumpy motel, and Cindy is left with no choice but to give in. He reserves the establishment’s comically ugly “Future Room,” bathed in unflattering neon blue light and decorated with fake gizmos, mirrors, a wall-sized moon photo and spinning bed. The childlike Dean finds it all delightful; the more sophisticated Cindy reacts as most of us would – with dismay - but tolerates it nonetheless. They both commence drinking with dedication. But despite some genuinely romantic moments on this fateful night, their contempt for each other comes to the surface after a series of strange, drunken moments of canoodling on the motel floor, and Cindy later leaves him passed out in the bathroom.
Cindy and Dean are good people but find themselves in different places in their lives – something both seem to recognize but only he is unwilling and unable to acknowledge. While their contrasting outlooks and socioeconomic backgrounds weren’t an issue early on, those factors clearly pose real-life obstacles in their later lives, as both her devotion to nursing and his apathy toward minimum wage jobs du jour grow. His laissez-faire bachelorhood in New York worked out fine, but that aimlessness and refusal to grow up carry consequences later as a husband and father. When the younger Dean meets his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, you sense that Cindy’s father recognizes this contrast in ambition. And while Dean’s relationship with their little girl, who they both love fiercely, is endearing, he relates to her as more of a playmate than a dad; Cindy has to do all the actual raising, it seems.
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