Review of Blue Valentine (2010) by Francesco — 13 Nov 2011

The movie focus is the depiction of a broken marriage between two working class people,Dean and Cindy.What could have been a great movie becomes a failed occasion to portray an emotionally absorbing tale of an ended love story(as it was in a terrific movie such "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind").

Despite the movie boasts great performances by the two leading actors,particularly by Williams,the big problem is the lack of a solid script that doesn't offer the chance to know about the characters and their love story.

I would not call them insignificant informations because when you decide to make a movie about a couple and their fallen marriage you have to provide the audience of a plausible explanation of their relationship.

Without that we struggle to be involved with the two leads.With "Blue Valentine" we exactly don't know why they fell in love and why after years they can't stand each other and why their love ends.

We are left with a series of disjointed bouncing back and forth scenes of their former happy days that have not much to say,except that they go quite well together in the first chapters and scenes of their declined relationship.

As I said before,the acting is solid(to compensate the holes in the script).Ryan Gosling was very good but it's Michelle Williams who gives a great performance that is the best thing of the entire movie.

She deserved her Oscar nomination for her outstanding performance.Gosling portrays a man who tries to understand why her wife doesn't love him anymore and a good father although he has a scantly work that clearly makes Cindy feel quite disappointed and he is often drunk.

I suspect that Cianfrance takes the side of the female lead although she is the most unlikeable of both of the leading characters and due to the troublesome script we hardly understand why she was in love and why she became so cold towards her husband.

I simply found "Blue Valentine" the most overrated movie of 2010 and I don't know if this movie wouldn't have struggled to win many praises if it wasn't for the Weinstein campaign.My vote of the movie is 5/10.