“Blue Valentine” (2010)

Watching “Blue Valentine” the day after seeing an excellent piece of live local theatre I was struck by how rare actual drama is in contemporary cinema, particularly in American film.   Hollywood churns out melodrama by the truck load but tends to shy away from presenting rounded, flawed characters challenged by the minutiae of everyday life.

“Blue Valentine” is a drama for and about grown ups.  It’s the absolute opposite of escapist fantasies like, say, “The Notebook”, movies which trade in the mythology of true love.  In fact, it deconstructs some of that type of thinking, juxtaposing the sweet and the sour of a relationship, mixing up its story’s chronology so that the early joys of meeting and courtship are shown in stark contrast to a marriage’s disintegration.

The plot is relatively straightforward.  Its execution and emotional content are not.  The lead performances are about as good as American acting gets these days.  Michelle Williams plays an aspiring New York medical student, alienated from all in her psychologically abusive family save her world weary grandmother and none too happy with a boyfriend who treats her like a sexual object.  Ryan Gosling is a salt of earth type, an unambitious manual worker prone to romantic day dreaming.  When his very real charm gets past her defences the two begin the type of tentative fling that usually lasts a few weeks at best.  The circumstances that rush them to the registry office can only paper over the cracks for so long.

There are few false moments and many harrowing ones. The audience is given space to make its own mind up about the couple’s motivations and actions.  Personally I found Gosling’s character to be overly smothering, juvenile and a borderline alcoholic.  The young lady next to me thought Williams an insensitive, cold bitch.

It goes without saying that “Blue Valentine” isn’t a first date movie.  Quite apart from all the arguing and the distress the sex scenes only rarely reflect mutual satisfaction.  Darling Michelle is penetrated from behind with such force that Heath Ledger will be spinning in the grave in a posthumous, prescription drug fuelled jealous rage. An abortion sequence could also double as a SPUC advertisement.

On the other hand the film isn’t blind to the seductive nature of romance.  There’s a scene of ukulele serenading that’s both gentle and touching.  Sadly, “Blue Valentine”’s point is that in life such moments are fleeting.