Blue Valentine

SPOILERS AHOY.

I loved this movie. Even though the ending is in the pitch ("It's about a couple breaking up,") I was still clinging to the possibility that they might stay together. That's how in love with it I was - usually if I know the plot I just watch the movie to say I've watched it, but this one I was actually emotionally invested in.

As a piece of storytelling, it's an interesting experiment in flashbacks. If it's been in vogue the last few years to tell a love story by juxtaposing the beginning and end of the relationship, then Blue Valentine is the most triumphant example of it that I've seen. We've seen this gimmick before - it was in 500 Days of Summer, which I honestly hated - but here it feels more honest. It's a difference in tone. 500 Days was too metatheatrical, too willing to utilize film cliches and irony. Blue Valentine doesn't use title cards or fancy effects. There's something about the soft focus and color saturation that feels old-fashioned. The awkward angles feel intimate, not avant-garde.

It's like watching someone's home movies. How it began, how it ended, piecing it together. The main action of the film is set over the course of the fourth of July weekend, and there's something just so quintessentially American about the story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl get married, have a kid, buy a house, get a dog - the American dream. And then it falls apart. The dog gets hit by a car. You try to have a romantic getaway but you're both just too pre-occupied. The American dream crumbles around you, and then your wife demands a divorce on Independence day.

They could be anyone's parents. And I think that's why I got so emotionally invested - because it feels true. Most of Blue Valentine's press comes from its original NC-17 rating (successfully overturned), and I think I agree with the interviews that the MPAA wasn't offended by the oral sex so much as they were by the honesty. Like I mentioned in my American Idiot rant, Americans like their sex and violence covered in a sheen of unreality. When you wipe that sheen off, we recoil.

There's a lot that isn't said in this movie. For every inch we learn about Cindy and Dean's backstories, there's a lot more we don't learn. Little clues to their personalities that might explain why these people are the way they are, that aren't explained - not that the movie needs to. We get enough. We don't need to know it all. Our minds fill it in. Whether it makes them more or less sympathetic is left up to the viewer.

Anyway I loved it. It's such a charming and honest little movie and the characters are likeable without feeling cutesy. If you get a chance, you should definitely check it out. I hate to use words like "adorable" for movies with sex and violence, but it really is. It's adorable, but it's also raw and emotional and painful.

:)