Analysis of "Blue Valentine"



"Blue Valentine" is a 2010 romantic drama film written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Derek Cianfrance's film is a sombre, painful portrait of a toxic marriage, often touching and sometimes moving, though occasionally contrived and self-conscious in its effects. The story, told in a fragmented, flashback-heavy style which is Cianfrance's debut feature is fundamentally a very simple story. It is essentially the tragic tale of a marriage falling apart. Ryan Gosling stars as Dean, a soft-hearted man in his early twenties who falls in love with a pre-med student named Cindy (Michelle Williams), so much so that he takes the role as a father to a child whom Cindy had with another man. 

The main reason why I think that our film links so well to "Blue Valentine" is due to the narrative structure. In our film we have used scenes from both the past and the present which have been intercut in order to juxtapose our protagonists' relationship in both the past and the presence. "Blue Valentine" adopts a similar style in which Cianfrance gives us scenes of the couple's breakdown intercut with scenes of their courtship, six years earlier. The extra twist is a complete absence of title cards or dates to indicate which timeframe we're watching. The Dean of the present-day is a house painter, balding, and drinking, though we sense still a boyish playfulness when he's around their daughter. Cindy, a hospital nurse, is more brusque and impatient, a little martyrish, though it's a subtlety of the film that our sympathies keep shifting between husband and wife as the fissures in their relationship broaden.