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“Blue Valentine” is the best love story of 2010, but don’t dare walk into it expecting “The Notebook.” It features “Notebook” star Ryan Gosling, and a classic, downtown-at-night courtship scene reminiscent of the one Gosling shared with Rachel McAdams, but this tragic tale is romantic for its irreparable loss and anguish, not rowboat rides in swan-filled ponds. Moreover, it is no Hollywood product. The breakout feature from writer/director Derek Cianfrance, it’s a naked and deeply soulful indie romance, and though it’s often devastating to watch, the feelings it evokes are far more genuine than any in your standard weepie.
Anyone who’s even begun to feel a relationship’s pulse fading will find resonance in the salted wound that’s become the married life of Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), a young couple whose years together have only driven them apart. Within moments, you can sense the strain domestic life and parenthood have put on the pair’s relationship. She, a nurse, wants more from life; he, a lackadaisical taker of odd jobs, is content being a working-class husband and father. Using exemplary criss-crossing chronology, Cianfrance illustrates how Dean and Cindy came to this point, showing their love both as it develops and as it dies.
Gosling and Williams each give career-best performances (which is saying quite a lot), and each is highly persuasive while laying bare the pluses and minuses of an uncommonly human character. But Cianfrance is the true heavy-lifter when it comes to making both lovers complex and sympathetic. He doesn’t want you to take sides. His story and his structure gradually offer crucial eye-openers about Dean and Cindy, causing your allegiance to flip-flop. When “Blue Valentine” finally pulls back, it’s a fair analysis of a doomed union, with no fingers left to point.
This isn’t how movie romances are supposed to go. Events are supposed to meet a happy resolution. But Cianfrance isn’t working by any formula. His film is defined by truth, specifically one of the hardest ones to face: some things simply aren’t meant to be.
Blue Valentine
R
Four reels out of four
Opening at the Ritz Five Friday
Recommended Rental
Animal Kingdom
R
Available Tuesday
An outstanding Australian import, “Animal Kingdom” catches up with a crime family not as it’s on the rise, but as it’s unraveling. Following a slow-burning first half, the film explodes into a fry-your-nerves thriller, making way for an indelible performance by Jacki Weaver and a myriad of twists, none of which you’ll see coming. SPR
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