Blue Valentine

Derek Cianfrance's spent over a decade trying to get Blue Valentine made, so perhaps it's inevitable that the weight of all that ruminating and planning—all that effort—is felt in the final product. Blue Valentine is an accomplished film, and the leads, particularly Michelle Williams, deliver strong, nuanced performances. Cianfrance is unflinching as he depicts the joyous courtship and the painful dissolution of a young couple's marriage. The film cuts back and forth between sweet budding romance and six years later, as the couple, now with a child, desperately cling to their dying relationship. Cianfrance shot the earlier scenes in warm Super 16, then gave his actors a month to develop a history (and gain some weight) before shooting the later scenes in cold HD video. There is one particularly ebullient off-the-cuff moment from the early days, wherein the characters show each other their "hidden talents," but the later scenes don't have an equal punch. The way the timeframes are cut together feels a bit inorganic; the crosscutting gives the movie a fashionable arthouse flair, but that doesn't really suit the straightforward, brutally honest story that Cianfrance is trying to tell. There's a heaviness—a meticulously constructed feeling—to his approach that detracts from the spontaneity of the performances and drains some of the life from this otherwise laudable movie.