Derek Cianfrance’s painful, finely acted marriage drama is worth the discomfort. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams make the early happiness count, though the repeated switches between courtship and resentment eventually become too predictable.
Blue Valentine is a painful, persuasive film about a marriage in trouble, and we recommend it with a warning about repetition. Derek Cianfrance moves between Dean and Cindy’s courtship and their later unhappiness, trusting us to keep both versions of the couple in mind. The early affection has to be convincing for this to work. If we spend those scenes simply spotting future problems, there is little to lose. For much of the film, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams make us want to stay with them.
Gosling’s Dean makes charm look like a sincere effort to please, which helps explain why it can survive beyond the point where it is useful. The ukulele and street dance could have been an insistently adorable interlude. Instead, Gosling and Williams make the pleasure of finding someone willing to be silly with you feel unforced. We were moved by it. Seeing them enjoy each other makes the strained exchanges elsewhere harder to bear.
Williams is especially good at Cindy’s weariness, without making her seem to have stopped feeling. She gives irritation enough weight that we do not need a speech explaining every grievance. Beside Gosling’s attempts at sweetness, her impatience can seem harsh, but the performance conveys the exhaustion of having to respond to somebody else’s enthusiasm. We can understand why he wants a warmer reception, and why she cannot keep providing one.
Andrij Parekh’s cinematography distinguishes the earlier relationship from the troubled present without making the change difficult to follow. The visual contrast is strong enough that each return to the courtship brings an immediate sense of relief. That also creates a risk: the pictures can seem to have decided how we should feel before the actors get to work. Parekh is more effective when the contrasting styles let us notice how differently the couple behave without insisting on the difference.
Inbal Weinberg’s production design is usefully unobtrusive, keeping the surroundings from competing with the two leads. There is little pleasure here in admiring the couple’s world from a safe distance. Grizzly Bear’s music is affecting, though the extra melancholy sometimes feels unnecessary. The actors have already made the unhappiness clear, and we would occasionally prefer to be left with them.
Editors Ron Patane and Jim Helton give the movement between periods a clarity that matters in such a close examination of two people. We are rarely distracted by the task of working out when we are. The trouble is that the returns begin to produce the same response: affection, then the discomfort of knowing what follows. Once that rhythm becomes familiar, another contrast does not always deepen our understanding.
Cianfrance, who writes with Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis, allows conflicting feelings to coexist without forcing us to choose a wholly innocent partner. Each actor makes the other person’s company seem desirable and difficult. Their earlier happiness remains credible even when they become hard to like. That generosity keeps the film from becoming an exercise in watching people suffer for having once been hopeful.
Romantic dramas often ask us to believe in a couple chiefly because the people playing them are attractive. Here, the courtship gives us a reason to care, and the later scenes do not make that care feel foolish. At 112 minutes, it is an exacting evening, with enough tenderness to justify the strain. Save it for an evening when neither of you needs cheering up.
