4 stars (out of 5)
Director: Derek Cianfrance.
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman, Mike Vogel
Rating: (R16)
Blue Valentine is as harsh and uncompromising a take on a marriage meltdown as you are ever likely to see.
The warts-and-all portrayal of a couple at breaking point was initially pitched by director Derek Cianfrance more than 10 years ago.
Having cast Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), Cianfrance cunningly cultivated two amazing actors who lived with these characters for a long time.
Blue Valentine tells a familiar tale of a couple struggling to rekindle the spark that ignited them in the first place.
Spliced together from the stark present, captured on the vivid Red camera, and the past (shot on super 16), Blue Valentine won't win any awards for editing, but that doesn't seem to matter.
Gosling is Dean, a chain-smoking house painter who thinks nothing of opening a beer at 8am.
Besotted with his daughter, Dean knows his marriage to Cindy (Williams) is teetering on the brink, but is powerless to know how to reconnect.
Cindy throws herself into work and tries to act as if Dean doesn't exist. But it wasn't always this way. In their courtship we discover a romance born of chance and circumstance.
Gosling and Williams are mesmerising and the exquisitely captured close-ups from Dean and Cindy's infatuation period make the ensuing animosity harder to bear.
As the fall-out reaches a climax, you almost feel like an accidental voyeur - it's brutal.
Best thing: The utterly convincing chemistry between the leads.
Worst thing: Realising that the only relief from watching this train wreck is via the door at the rear of the cinema.
See it with: A relationship counsellor.
- Mark Orton
