The story of how Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) fall in and out of love. Cross-cutting the couple’s tender beginnings with their bitter ending. 

Completing my double bill of Ryan Gosling characters falling in and out of love I watched 2010’s Blue Valentine. A much more gritty and contemporary love story compared to the picture book romance of The Notebook. Written by Cami Delavigne, Joey Curtis and director David Cianfrance the film portrays the dissolution of a marriage juxtaposed with the couple falling in love. 

Shot on a shoestring budget and featuring many improvised scenes between Gosling and Williams the goal of the film is to try and give as realistic a portrayal of a relationship’s beginnings and ending as possible. In order to differentiate the timelines within the scenes Cianfrance shot all the pre-marriage scenes using a Super 16mm film camera and all of the post-marriage scenes using a Red One digital camera. Whilst the actors appearances are aged via subtle changes as well there is little difficulty in identifying the differences between the grainy and clear images the cameras give the scenes. 

Despite the realism on display the power and magic of love is still represented here. Perhaps mostly in the younger version of Dean who believes in love at first sight and tracks down this girl whom he only glimpses once when out of town doing a removals job. The couple’s falling in love is bittersweet though as those scenes are always perfectly juxtaposed with similar scenes of their relationship crumbling years later whilst they try to raise their daughter. 

The entire film is perhaps summed up by an exchange that Cindy has with her grandmother early in the movie. Cindy has grown up in a home where her parents stayed together for her and who openly hate each other. Cindy contemplates that they must have loved each other at one point and asks her grandmother, “How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?” Her grandmother responds, “I think the only way you can find out is to have the feeling.” It feels similar to one of the questions asked in the phenomenal science fiction film Arrival, if you know something will end in heartbreak, would you start it? 

The performances from Williams and Gosling are phenomenal and are at the heart of why the film works so well. Cindy and Dean are unable to have a conversation without it becoming an argument. They no longer understand each other. It feels like they are both yearning for something but they are unable to explain or express to each other and can no longer help and support each other. Placed alongside the sweeter, softer moments of them falling in love and supporting each other it is tragic to watch. 

The result is a powerful and poignant story with memorable performances. Derek Cianfrance would go on to follow this film with the stunning The Place Beyond The Pines and I still hope that he can deliver another picture as powerful as these. 

Certainly not a date movie, but a fantastic one nevertheless.