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 sex motel hoping in vain to piece together their crumbling, incommunicative six-year relationship. Be thankful “Blue Valentine” didn’t open on Christmas day because this clumsy arrangement of snarled flashbacks—showing lovers Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) falling in and out of various stages of love, undress and focus—is not only dismally cineilliterate, it’s the year’s most pointlessly depressing film.
Oppressive foreshadowing hits us the second the opening credits end. Megan, the family pooch has escaped. Rest assured that by the time “Blue Valentine” draws to its dismal close you’ll exit the theater feeling more deflated than roadkill. The couple meets at an old people’s home where Cindy is a nurse and brawny Dean helps seniors move in. Normally I can’t 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’s left to take from the movie is the couples’ romantic storefront song and dance rendition of the maddeningly unsubtle “You Always Hurt the One You Love.”
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’s Williams who makes all the suffering worth suffering through. A shower scene—both 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—represents the film’s emotional climax. This performance, coupled with her starring role in “Wendy and Lucy,” establishes Ms. Williams as the finest actress of her generation.
The floundering screenplay was awarded the million-dollar first prize in the 2006 Chrysler Film Project contest making “Blue Valentine” 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’s painfully constrictive lens work and fuzzy compositions. I tend to sit close—better to have the talkers and texters behind you than in front—and 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.
All I could think of while watching “Blue Valentine” was John Cassavetes directing “Two for the Road.“ Neither is done justice. Come for Ms. Williams and leave feeling scammed by the writing and direction of this marital scream fest. Who’s afraid of Derek Cianfrance? I am George, I am
