Blue Valentine - a Movie Review

And so tonight I went to see “Blue Valentine” starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a flesh and blood family living in Pennsylvania.  The story starts out present day with the married couple, alcoholic husband as his wife trying to raise their daughter and keep the peace in their household.

The story has flashbacks which show the audience how they met and fell in love.  Michelle Williams character is an only child in a dysfunctional family.  Nightly she sits in a house where her parents hate one another and its one verbally abusive night after the next.  Her only saving grace is school and the relationship with her disabled grandmother.

In a chance meeting she and Gosling meet and he pursues her without abandon. 

The performances in this film were outstanding.  Michelle Williams was nominated for her role and rightly so.  You never get the sense she is acting or more to the point over-acting as too many actresses tend to do.  Ryan Gosling is always at his best (ever seen Half Nelson?)  rent that there’s a film worth seeing.  He is a young Sean Penn without all the shitty movies Sean Penn had to make before he got it right, lol.

The direction was excellent it was done so in a way that you felt like an intruder watching moments that were never meant to be seen by an outsider.  At the start of their marriage you could feel their hopefulness and promise and in the end you could feel the yearning amidst the pain and nightmare that was unfolding.

Gritty, moving and I think worth seeing, I enjoyed this film.