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Written by Gregg Shapiro
Feb 10, 2011
Just like the song says, love hurts. In Derek Cianfrance’s romantic tragedy “Blue Valentine,” there’s little doubt that house painter Dean (Ryan Gosling) and nurse Cindy (Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams) love each other when we first encounter them at home with their young daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka). But unmistakable cracks are beginning to show, especially after Cindy fails to lock the yard gate and the family dog Megan gets out and is hit by a car.
Another indication of trouble brewing is that Cindy’s boss, Dr. Feinberg (Ben Shenkman), has offered her a job that involves relocation, something she hasn’t yet discussed with Dean. It bears mentioning that Dr. Feinberg also is attracted to Cindy.
Leaving the present setting, “Blue Valentine” sets up a series of flashbacks to the past to establish that Dean and Cindy’s relationship wasn’t always so tenuous. Dean, sweet and kind of goofy, interviews at a moving company and is hired, in spite of his lack of experience. Cindy is in college, where she is studying medicine and dating jock Bobby (Mike Vogel). Cindy lives with her parents in a house clouded with tension and often visits her grandmother, who lives in a senior’s facility. It is there that Dean and Cindy meet after the moving company that employs Dean relocates an elderly man into the home.
Back in the present, Dean books a room at a Sybaris-style motel so that he and Cindy can get away following their pet’s death. They drop Frankie off at Cindy’s father’s house. On the way to the motel, they stop to pick up libations for the night and to refuel. Cindy runs into Bobby in the liquor store, which has an unexpected impact on her, especially since he hits on her. Once in the car, she tells Dean about seeing Bobby, and he is visibly upset.
Dean has good reason to be upset, as we discover in several of the flashbacks, because Bobby is a dark bruise in both of their lives. The scenes from the past provide viewers with an understanding of how Cindy and Dean arrived at the crucial point they now find themselves.
The characters are intimately rendered, with a combination of humor and raw erotic heat. Williams and Gosling believably portray the blush of new and real love and the devastation of finding yourself irretrievably out of love.
