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From Amazon.co.uk
Love blooms and dies at the same time in the delicate dance between Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain). Gosling's Dean, a high-school dropout, works for a New York moving company. While relocating a frail widower into a retirement home, he spots Cindy, a nursing student who's visiting her grandmother, but the film actually begins six years later. Married with a daughter, they live in rural Pennsylvania. Heavy drinker Dean's looks are fading, while Cindy still turns heads. In his elegantly constructed second feature, writer-director Derek Cianfrance pirouettes between past and present, with each scene commenting on the next (set to the bittersweet tones of Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear). The Dean of the early years pursues Cindy, who resists at first, but a spontaneous date ends with her tap dancing (badly) and him singing (not so badly). She leaves her domineering boyfriend (Mike Vogel) for this attentive stranger, leading to scenes of intimacy that are far more suggestive than pornographic--even if the MPAA briefly rated the film NC-17. Later, when the family dog goes missing, the cracks in their marriage intensify, so Dean arranges for a night of romance, which plays out like a negative image of their first date. If the two actors, who are very good, are meant to carry equal weight, Gosling has the more difficult task. It's harder to like the clingy, insecure Dean, who loves more intensely and less wisely, but that makes Gosling's the braver performance. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Product Description
Blue Valentine is an intimate, shattering portrait of a disintegrating marriage.
On the far side of a once-passionate romance, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are married with a young daughter. Hoping to save their marriage, they steal away to a theme hotel. We then encounter them years earlier, when they met and fell in love—full of life and hope.
Moving fluidly between these two time periods, Blue Valentine unfolds like a cinematic duet whose refrain asks, where did their love go?
Special Features include:
On the far side of a once-passionate romance, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are married with a young daughter. Hoping to save their marriage, they steal away to a theme hotel. We then encounter them years earlier, when they met and fell in love—full of life and hope.
Moving fluidly between these two time periods, Blue Valentine unfolds like a cinematic duet whose refrain asks, where did their love go?
Special Features include:
- Deleted Scenes
- Q&A
- Making Of
- Home Movies
- Director and Editor's Commentary
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
By L. Macleod
Format:DVD
This is an emotionally engaging film study of two characters who have both suffered some childhood trauma and fall in love. The male has had maternal abandonement and it has left him seeking love and family - he is an 'unfinished' person, with a massively kind and loving heart but an inability to connect to his identity and build on it within a relationship. He is needy, emotionally fragile, and in his need for love he leaves himself wide open to a kind of emotional abuse that invariably he sets up in his behaviour. A child within a man. The girl has a bully of a father and it seems she has been quite promiscuous - not able to emotionally engage with men until she meets the young man who decides to marry her and accept her pregnancy. She is very intelligent and her choices are not often with her whole heart - she loves the young man but not enough because she is also not a complete person; she has too many conditions in her love and the young man is unable to live up to them or able to achieve his own potential. The story unfolds and is dramatic and deeply sad. Their young love was full of promise but the film shows that often love is not enough - human beings carry burdens and trauma from breakdowns in family relationships and this can effect their ability to build loving adult relationships later. Blue Valentine is an incredible film - it leaves you to do a lot of work and yet provides all the beautiful imagery and superb acting to see a marvellous human story unfold.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This film is unusual in its realistic depiction of a couple slowly falling out of love. It is very touching and feels very real, as if you were not watching actors on a screen, but rather eavesdropping on a real couple... The kind of feeling you often get watching European films, but seldom do you see this in a Hollywood production.
Gosling and Williams are great as the two main characters, and so is their little girl: it's hard to believe that kid is not actually their daughter in real life, she is such a natural in every scene!
Warning: this is not an "entertaining" picture, of the popcorn variety, nor is it something to watch on Valentine's day with your significant other... It is depressing to watch and will leave you thinking about it for days. Thank the great performances and the brilliant directing for that.
I do recommend it as a sort of "bad-tasting medicine": you don't enjoy watching it, at times, but you can't turn away from it; and it helps you reflect and understand some of your own issues, as you see the characters struggling with their relationship. This is a film you can learn from, and use for your own growth and development.
Gosling and Williams are great as the two main characters, and so is their little girl: it's hard to believe that kid is not actually their daughter in real life, she is such a natural in every scene!
Warning: this is not an "entertaining" picture, of the popcorn variety, nor is it something to watch on Valentine's day with your significant other... It is depressing to watch and will leave you thinking about it for days. Thank the great performances and the brilliant directing for that.
I do recommend it as a sort of "bad-tasting medicine": you don't enjoy watching it, at times, but you can't turn away from it; and it helps you reflect and understand some of your own issues, as you see the characters struggling with their relationship. This is a film you can learn from, and use for your own growth and development.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Absolutely mesmerising, incredibly heartbreaking, and strangely haunting. This film stayed with me for days. I think what puts people off this film is its resistance to resolution, and its unsettlingly real performances. Gosling and Williams manage to incite feelings of discomfort in the audience similar to watching a fight between a married couple at a dinner party. Love and hate go hand in hand here, as do overwhelming lust and intense emptiness. Perhaps this is what scares the reviewers who give one stars - that this film examines love and its inability to remain constant against its biggest enemy: time.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By bl
Format:Blu-ray
Beautifully written, wonderfully acted, directed with great confidence, highly personal, true to life, moving, beautiful, painful, in short: a magnificent film.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By A. Willard
Format:DVD
The beginning, and the end, of a relationship is charted in this touching, honest, but at times brutal, film.
Dean (Ryan Gosling) is an amiable, deeply unambitious, young man from a `broken' home who meets Cindy (Michelle Williams), an intelligent, sensitive, young woman from an equally damaged household, whose search for affection of any kind has led her into promiscuity. They fall in love, marry, have a child, (who may or may not be Dean's), and then - what? Live happily after? Well, maybe not.
The two lead performances are superb. Ryan Gosling, (who, I must confess, I'd never seen before), is heart-breaking as the decent, loving husband who, nevertheless, has become lazy, both physically and mentally, and has retreated into the womb of family-life, without considering that his wife may need something more. Michelle Williams is equally fine, in a more difficult, unsympathetic, role, as the wife who steadily loses respect and love for a man who can no longer offer her what she needs.
It's beautifully shot: the contrast between the warm glow of their first, and only, date; and the cold, metallic, sheen of the scene in the love-hotel, marks the director, Derek Cianfrance, (another new name to me), as a definite one to watch.
Highly recommended - though with the proviso that the film does not flinch: the conclusion allows neither the protagonists nor the audience off the hook. It is most definitely not a `date' film.
Dean (Ryan Gosling) is an amiable, deeply unambitious, young man from a `broken' home who meets Cindy (Michelle Williams), an intelligent, sensitive, young woman from an equally damaged household, whose search for affection of any kind has led her into promiscuity. They fall in love, marry, have a child, (who may or may not be Dean's), and then - what? Live happily after? Well, maybe not.
The two lead performances are superb. Ryan Gosling, (who, I must confess, I'd never seen before), is heart-breaking as the decent, loving husband who, nevertheless, has become lazy, both physically and mentally, and has retreated into the womb of family-life, without considering that his wife may need something more. Michelle Williams is equally fine, in a more difficult, unsympathetic, role, as the wife who steadily loses respect and love for a man who can no longer offer her what she needs.
It's beautifully shot: the contrast between the warm glow of their first, and only, date; and the cold, metallic, sheen of the scene in the love-hotel, marks the director, Derek Cianfrance, (another new name to me), as a definite one to watch.
Highly recommended - though with the proviso that the film does not flinch: the conclusion allows neither the protagonists nor the audience off the hook. It is most definitely not a `date' film.
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
By Tom
Format:DVD
This film deserves way more recognition than it seems it's going to receive. Sure it's got various nominations but, unfortunately, sneaking out in the shadow of the also brilliant `The King's Speech' and just before the bluster of `Black Swan', this beautiful yet emotionally harrowing debut might end up criminally overlooked when it comes to the big awards. Both leads are incredible in arguably the most realistically brutal love story I've witnessed on the big screen. It's a tragic, romantic, occasionally funny masterpiece and I urge everyone to check it out so that it might get the following it deserves. Brilliant soundtrack too... and ignore the hype about it initially receiving an NC-17 rating.
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3.7 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
let down
Was looking forward to watching this film but was very disappointed. The story line didnt hold my attention as much as some of Ryan Gosslings other movies .would'nt recommend it
Published 20 days ago by jean belfast
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Watch
I really enjoyd this film it was a good watch and i got it a avery good price so very happy with my purcause
Published 23 days ago by chris
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boring
Did not like this movie, love the actors and they were very good in it but sorry way too boring
Published 1 month ago by Donna
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic
In Blue Valentine, Gosling and Williams play Dean and Cindy, a couple who have been through a lot. To begin with we get to see how unhappy they are in their marriage. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Fiction_Fan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking and real.
This film stayed with me long after I watched it. A credit to Derek Cianfrance and his story telling. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are phenomenal in their roles. Read more
Published 1 month ago by C. Baker
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quite Good
Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine is both a romance and a drama, depicting the lives of Dean Pereira (Ryan Gosling) and Cynthia Heller (Michelle Williams) at different points in... Read more
Published 2 months ago by D Brown
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but Forgettable
It is only two days since I watched this film and already it is fading from my mind. Even when viewing it, I was unmoved by the relationship between Gosling and Williams,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by mr blue
5.0 out of 5 stars
second hand dvd
I've been buying second hand dvd's as a way to increase my otherwise unaffordable collection. I'm very pleased with my purchases. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Roadrunner
1.0 out of 5 stars
hmm, not everyone's cup of tea.
I hate to be the one that doesn't understand all the hype. I am all for 'indie' movies, dodgy camera angles and life like quirky films but I found this movie uncomfortable. Read more
Published 2 months ago by katie
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not Good
I thought this film was horrible. It was about how two people ended up together and then began to hate each other, it was their road to divorce as opposed to a romance. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Bethany Freeman
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