What:
Blue ValentineWhen:
In cinemas Dec 26. (Advance screenings Sun Dec 19.)
Watch the trailer:
Here
Win:
Thanks to Palace Films, we have 10 dbls to give away. To enter email us with the subject 'You always hurt the one you love' melbourne.win@rightanglestudio.com.auRelated links:
Derek Cianfrance has also directed Brother Tied and Metalhead
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This isn't The Notebook. It may shatter your belief in true love, or leave you feeling glad to be single. But it's a rare treat to see a movie declare that idealism alone can't sustain happiness. Director Derek Cianfrance cuts deftly between Dean's (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy's (Michelle Williams) romantic memories and their passive-aggressive marriage. Blue Valentine is honest, impressionistic and heartbreaking. It's a wonderful film.
Neither protagonist emerges as a hero, and they divided my sympathies. Their whirlwind courtship begins by accident, continues by circumstance and drags into mutual contempt. Dean is that intriguing creature, the working-class hipster - he makes up for being a precarious dropout by acting cool and talking smart. Gosling's performance is impeccable: the playful charm that attracts clever, dutiful smalltown girl Cindy grows flabby and belligerent, becoming the childishness and lack of ambition that frustrates her. Williams also brilliantly shifts between chirpiness, raw vulnerability and barely disguised revulsion.
Shot either in uninterrupted takes or intrusive close-ups, the sex scenes feel almost too intimate to watch. The abortion scene was also pretty gruelling. But like its Grizzly Bear soundtrack, Blue Valentine is gorgeously wistful, too. Love and hope persist - even as ghosts of memory.
