I'm always prepared to enjoy an indie film that looks completely depressing or soul destroying. In fact, the more outrageously depressing a film, the more likely I am to really enjoy it. Which is why I was really looking forward to watching Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance and starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. Well, I was looking forward to it because it looked depressing but also because I heard rumors you got to see Ryan Gosling's bum.
The film centers on Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) at two points in their life. First, we meet the two and their adorable daughter, Frankie, at their home. Married, their lives seem to have run to a point where they seem to have lost all feelings for each other. This storyline of a loveless marriage is intercut with memory-like scenes of the two before they had met, idealistic about love and marriage, leading to their inevitable meeting.
At a heavy 112 minutes, Blue Valentine is not without its problems, which I think stem from Cianfrance's history as a documentary filmmaker. Writing and directing the film, Cianfrance's influence can be traced to the hyperrealism of the script. Arguments in the film seem to run through similar patterns - Dean and Cindy talk over each other, repeat each other, get distressed and stutter. At times it almost feels like there was no script, and the two are just so in character that they're riffing off of each other. It's fascinating to watch in terms of performance, and it certainly adds to several quite confronting scenes, however I feel like there was a poignancy that was lost in the dialogue. While a lot was said in the film, there isn't actually a lot of depth to it. Instead, Cianfrance seems to want his viewers to infer what he is trying to say, to watch the gradual decline of love through gesture and intricate reactions.
Both Gosling and Williams are wonderful to watch, and they truly do a good job of what couldn't be an easy character to play, I just feel like the format of the script was a major downfall in the film. That being said, I do believe this is a very new take on the love story genre, and the marketing of the film as 'a love story' is indeed very clever.
While I didn't mind the film, I think Cianfrance will go on to do bigger and better things.
No comments:
Post a Comment