Blue Valentine ***

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

Mike Vogel, Faith Wadlyka, John Doman, Ben Shenkman

Blue Valentine is essentially a twee remake of Revolutionary Road, they both explore the courtships and eventual destructions of two marriages.

In this case it's Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) who rushed into marriage after an intense love affair and eventually come to terms with the fact that they've become strangers to each other.

The film is edited so that we see the past and present at the same time. Through some ingenious cuts we see the intensity of their initial romance and the decay with which their marriage begins to crumble years later.

This technique, while aesthetically pleasing, provides the film with its major flaw, given that the audience immediately realizes that this was never going to lead to anywhere good.

Their romance is based on lies, youthful inexperience and a life altering twist that takes away some of the 70s-style realism director Cianfrance seems to be aiming for.

It doesn't take an expert to realize that their relationship was doomed from the moment they met, yet the film naively tries to surprise us and them, into discovering how bad things can go from one moment to another.

The editing therefore becomes like a way of torture and Cianfrance reveals a deep pessimism about the idea of love that we have learned from the movies.

His deconstruction of film romance is well intentioned but fails on the grounds that he eventually makes the plot feel absolutely redundant.

The film then is rescued by its two leading actors who give masterful performances. Williams infuses Cindy with a dislikability that few actresses would play with.

As a young adult we see her live joyfully and give in to the irresponsible delights of discovering love for the very first time. It's a pleasure to see Williams turn Cindy into someone who should know better but chooses to go for the fairy tale.

When we see the way she's turned out to be a few years later, Williams has aged in front of our eyes. Her joyful Cindy has become a bitter, resentful woman who is in so much pain that we can almost see it pour out of her skin.

Gosling first plays Dean like the Prince Charming every indie girl dreams of: he plays the ukulele, wears fantastic clothes and has an easy job that helps him pay the bills without compromising his artistic potential.

Later we see he has become a pathetic little creature who loves his wife so much that he's forgotten to love himself. Watching Gosling and Williams play off each other is a delight and their most dramatic scenes ache with a tender acidity that makes us ignore Cianfrance's intention to take this simple tale out of proportions.

Blue Valentine suffers because like its characters it feels like a jaded movie that should've known better. Williams and Gosling provide it with the bleeding heart it needs and resents.