Review of Blue Valentine (2010) by Josh D — 19 Apr 2013

The direction is utterly superb and one of my favorites that I have seen for quite some time. The compositions, aesthetics and way the actors worked together were great and I think Cianfrance did a great job for his first feature attempt.

Although, the performance by Michelle Williams, I thought, brought down the production and had Ryan standing there alone, really killing it. That and the story seemed to lack something. I believe it to be that there was no real high point in the arc of the story.

It is a bad situation that the characters have been in and it never gets better. They both lived sub-par lives and continued to even when trying to make the best of it. This is what Derek was probably going for, gritty real life stories that tell what true hardship and suffering pertains to, but eventually I got bored.

This was because it was so much hardship that I knew what the ending was going to be, I knew what kinds of characters these were, and with this there was no real climax. Pretty presumable where the story was going and what was going to happen, when Derek laid it out so early as well.