Posts Tagged ‘Michelle Williams’

Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine is a 21st century Kramer vs Kramer anchored with a superb performance by Michelle Williams as Cindy, an aspiring doctor whose potential is thwarted by a sudden marriage to Dean, a slacker not too serious house painter.

Fireworks that Fade

Set in suburban Pennsylvania, Blue Valentine is a depiction of a nonlinear disintegration of romance and marriage, made more intense by extreme closeup shots of Gosling and Williams as a young married couple whose love has clearly reached the end of its journey typified by a romantic night away from the domestic grind as a last ditch resort for their failing marriage.

Cindy and Dean’s love for each other is clearly precarious as they check into the Future Suite at a tacky motel upstate, and in between various stages of inebriation try to arouse each other again to the same levels of intensity that characterized their early dating sessions. While Gosling is brilliant and evokes a similar performance to that of his Oscar nominated role in Half Nelson, it is Michelle Williams who maintains the emotional gravity of the film with a poignant, slightly gloomy and always quirky performance as Cindy, a woman who is desperate to avoid the marital pitfalls of her bickering parents.

Blue Valentine is at times gloomy, deeply intense, but brilliantly acted and a must for viewers who appreciate independent American cinema.