Review: Blue Valentine

A five-word line of dialogue near the end of Blue Valentine sums up the film's central relationship. It is a line said with resignation and mild disgust: "Ah...you must be Dean."

A coworker of the film's lead female character, Cindy (Michelle Williams), utters the line when Cindy's drunk and agitated husband Dean (Ryan Gosling) arrives at Cindy's workplace to confront her about their latest marital meltdown. From the coworker's flat and frustrated tone, it's obvious that Cindy and Dean's marriage from hell is no secret, and Dean is taking most of the blame.

But laying all the blame on Dean isn't quite fair, and we know why by this point in Blue Valentine. A brutally honest, harrowingly real and strikingly nuanced look at an unlikely relationship that was probably DOA from the start, Blue Valentine wags a finger at both Cindy and Dean for the bad choices they've made. But it also explains with great empathy what motivated those choices.

Blue Valentine's simple premise contrasts its emotional complexity. It's essentially a two-character film that follows Cindy and Dean's relationship from their first meeting to the last gasps of their marriage. The nonlinear story is told mostly in flashback, jumping from Cindy and Dean's present-day marital doldrums to their past high and low points and back again, as it slowly reveals their backstories and peels away layers of their personalities. More a character study than a standard narrative, the film plays like a series of vignettes skillfully sewn together into a very satisfying (if very draining) whole.

In a way, Cindy and Dean are a conventional cinematic odd couple. Their chance meeting could be the sort of thing that happens only in the movies, although Blue Valentine's astute script steers clear of any real meet-cuteness. They cross paths in a nursing home where Cindy is tending to her grandmother and Dean is moving furniture into a new tenant's room. Smitten at first sight, Dean defies the obvious odds against him (she's a whip-smart college student and he's a thoroughly working-class furniture mover) and pursues her. His initial attempts to get her attention border on slightly creepy, but he soon convinces her he's legitimate and harmless. In no time, she's smitten also.

In a more conventional and less sophisticated film, all this would be little more than trite rom-com schlock. The notion that a smart and very attractive coed would give a rough-edged working stiff the time of day -- much less fall for him -- is the stuff of chick-flick fantasy, not cultural reality. But Blue Valentine is so smart and fleshes out Cindy and Dean so thoroughly that their romance eventually makes sense.

The romance makes sense because as the story progresses, it's apparent that Cindy and Dean are not really who we think they are at the outset. Dean's disarmingly goofy romantic charms are immediately apparent, but over the course of the film he also becomes more introspective and sophisticated than we initially assume. Sadly, much of his self awareness is fueled by alcohol. Conversely, Cindy's intelligence, poise and beauty belie a troubled soul. Glimpses at her family life and relationship with her former boyfriend (he's an insensitive and brutal Neanderthal of the highest order) reveal someone who lives in a world of hurt and desperately wants to be loved. Much of Blue Valentine's emotional punch stems from how it debunks our initial perceptions of its characters.

The more we learn about Cindy and Dean, the less surprising it is that they got together -- and that their marriage is a mess. Fast forward a few years from their first date to the present day, and she's a dedicated, responsible, career-oriented nurse; he's a house painter whose only apparent ambition is keeping a job he can do while half-drunk. Beyond having fleeting romantic sparks and adoring their young daughter, Frankie (Faith Wladyka), Cindy and Dean have almost nothing in common.

As smart as its script is, what really makes Blue Valentine work are the unnervingly real performances from Gosling and Williams. Neither misses a tragic beat. Gosling is arguably one of the best young actors working today, never failing to completely inhabit his characters. As Dean, he's the guy we all know who apparently means well, but often as not makes the wrong choice. His inherent laziness, irresponsible streak and boozy world view don't help matters, either. Gosling also plays Dean with a nagging, crippling fear that his wife -- and by extension, his barely middle-class life -- are slightly out of his league.

Williams lately has made a career of playing unglamorous characters, doing so superbly; my favorite role is her empathetic portrayal of the homeless Wendy in the wonderful Wendy and Lucy. She's note-perfect as Cindy, all stoicism and weary frustration. This is not to say Williams isn't sexy in the role; in several sexually charged scenes -- some of them a bit jarring -- she's undeniably sensuous. (Blue Valentine's frank eroticism initially earned it a kiss-of-death NC-17 rating. The MPAA has since changed the rating to R.) Like her mismatched husband, Cindy has made some spectacularly bad decisions; also like Dean, she's someone we all know, a woman completely trapped in her stressful, beaten-down life.

I highly recommend Blue Valentine, but be forwarned: It isn't the film to see if you're looking for an escapist good time at the movies. Aside from a few sunny romantic moments -- which help explain why Cindy and Dean are together at all -- the film is relentlessly grim. It's almost too real at times, a searing, unflinching study of a relationship we see all too often in the real world, a union that exists for all the wrong reasons. As in real life, love does not conquer all in Blue Valentine. But dreary reality aside, it's hard to beat as an example of Oscar-caliber filmmaking, especially for its stellar performances.