{"id":244106,"date":"2011-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/film-review-depressing-break-up-film-flounders-despite-stellar-cast\/"},"modified":"2011-01-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T08:00:00","slug":"film-review-depressing-break-up-film-flounders-despite-stellar-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/film-review-depressing-break-up-film-flounders-despite-stellar-cast\/","title":{"rendered":"Rese\u00f1a de la pel\u00edcula: Deprimente pel\u00edcula de ruptura fracasa a pesar del reparto estelar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Marks | SDUN Columnist<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Blue Valentine”
\nDirected<\/strong> by Derek Cianfrance
\nWritten <\/strong>by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne
\nProtagonizada por:<\/strong> Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams. John Doman and Mike Vogel
\nRating: one star<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Film<\/a>
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" (Courtesy of The Weinstein Company) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An unhappily married couple decides to leave their young daughter with the in-laws while they spend the night in a seedy sex motel hoping in vain to piece together their crumbling, incommunicative six-year relationship. Be thankful \u201cBlue Valentine\u201d didn\u2019t open on Christmas day because this clumsy arrangement of snarled flashbacks\u2014showing lovers Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) falling in and out of various stages of love, undress and focus\u2014is not only dismally cineilliterate, it\u2019s the year\u2019s most pointlessly depressing film.<\/p>\n

Oppressive foreshadowing hits us the second the opening credits end. Megan, the family pooch has escaped. Rest assured that by the time \u201cBlue Valentine\u201d draws to its dismal close you\u2019ll exit the theater feeling more deflated than roadkill. The couple meets at an old people\u2019s home where Cindy is a nurse and brawny Dean helps seniors move in. Normally I can\u2019t wait to leapfrog past the gooey set up and get right to the agonizing dissolution. The break-up scenes such as they are offer so little in the way of originality that after the blahs dissipate, all that\u2019s left to take from the movie is the couples\u2019 romantic storefront song and dance rendition of the maddeningly unsubtle \u201cYou Always Hurt the One You Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally slated to begin shooting in 2008, the production was postponed in order to give Michelle Williams proper time to grieve the loss of Heath Ledger. Gosling is good without bringing much new to his character, but it\u2019s Williams who makes all the suffering worth suffering through. A shower scene\u2014both opponents square off at opposite ends of the stall with Cindy making it perfectly clear to the audience, if not her dense husband, that she wants no part of him\u2014represents the film\u2019s emotional climax. This performance, coupled with her starring role in \u201cWendy and Lucy,\u201d establishes Ms. Williams as the finest actress of her generation.<\/p>\n

The floundering screenplay was awarded the million-dollar first prize in the 2006 Chrysler Film Project contest making \u201cBlue Valentine\u201d as painful on the ears as it is on the eyes. The entire film appears to have been shot through a dirty windshield, no doubt an attempt to inject intensity and realism. Always the first to complain about the excessive and egregious amount of dismembering close-ups in 80 percent of movies released today, nothing could have prepared me for cinematographer Andrij Parekh\u2019s painfully constrictive lens work and fuzzy compositions. I tend to sit close\u2014better to have the talkers and texters behind you than in front\u2014and after about 10 minutes, those around me began inching towards the back of the theater as if further proximity from the screen would somehow make it legible.<\/p>\n

All I could think of while watching \u201cBlue Valentine\u201d was John Cassavetes directing \u201cTwo for the Road.\u201c Neither is done justice. Come for Ms. Williams and leave feeling scammed by the writing and direction of this marital scream fest. Who\u2019s afraid of Derek Cianfrance? I am George, I am<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Marks | SDUN Columnist “Blue Valentine” Directed by Derek Cianfrance Written by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams. John Doman and Mike Vogel Rating: one star An unhappily married couple decides to leave their young daughter with the in-laws while they spend the night in a seedy […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1292,"featured_media":244107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Film Review: Depressing break-up film flounders despite stellar cast","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}