Review of Blue Valentine (2010) by Melissa E — 20 May 2014

4.5/10 Bleak and overwritten. This is a film about characters and since they did not click for me at any point, it generally failed to me on a whole. There is something to be liked, for one the performances are the best part of the movie even though the actors don't have good characters to work with they manage to deliver at least some emotion, but it never felt honest to me, the script was way too "self-aware" and I never felt the two leads as characters, real, coherent people.

The cinematography is pretentious and dull, this movie gets close to being unwatchable in some frames: they are trying so hard to be clever and real, but they all miserably fail and deliver a poor visual experience.

There is no story-arch I felt involved in, it was just like a compilation of scenes and that brought to a zero-payoff which didn't leave me depressed (as it should have), just kind of indifferent.

At times I was someway interested in the sotry but all in all I didn't have the emotional exeperience the movie was trying to deliver. I do respect it as a movie because from a filmaking point of view the cinematography was the only totally wrong thing I found in it, and I understand why people liked it, it just never struck to me.