BLUE VALENTINE

Blue Valentine was born as a script 11 years ago to director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance. It was shot in a mere 30 days. Its story is told through two memories. One that transpired over a few months in a couple’s (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) past when they meet and the other over 24 hours in the present where they’d possibly part. In it’s 112 minutes of running time, Blue Valentine dances between being seeped in a grainy, sepia-toned tale of young love and then pulled out of drowning water and cast under the fluorescent light of a certain future room, where the built-up blemishes of a six-year-old relationship lay bare naked for all to see.  Cianfrance claims that this film was based on his childhood fear of his parents breaking up. And in 11 years and 30 days with the help of two extremely talented actors, Cianfrance has found the poetry behind irreconcilable differences. He’s transformed the mundanity and commonality of present-day no-fault divorce into a tragic heartbreak you deny to have seen coming. I am not saying this film will start or end in divorce but the, “Will they or won’t they” tension is played to subtle perfection by Williams and Gosling, both nominated recently for the Best Actress and Actor categories in next year’s Golden Globes. This is not a purposely manufactured tragedy (à la Notebook or P.S. I Love You), it is what it is – beautiful memories of a relationship in its natural state of decay. (KS)