Blue Valentine directed by Derek Cianfrance is a film about two people falling in love and then their relationship disintegrating a few years later.

The film goes forward and back in time as we see Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) meet and fall in love. She is a pre med student and he is a delivery man, a high school dropout. Cindy becomes pregnant from her ex boyfriend a wrestling student who later beats up Dean but he still goes on to marry Cindy.

Several years after their marriage, Dean is wearing glasses, losing his hair, maybe drinks too much and works as a painter and decorator. Cindy works as a nurse, still attractive and they have a young daughter.

The marriage has lost its spark although as far as I can tell Dean still loves Cindy. Maybe it is Cindy who is bored, wants more, she met her ex in a bar which might had got her mind whirring or maybe her past has returned to haunt her as her parents has a dysfunctional marriage.

This is a very adult, uncompromising film even bleak. Yet in some ways so real, maybe this is how marriages fall apart in real life.

I did feel the movie was flawed, rather slow and uninvolving. It could be as we do not see their relationship in the middle as to what triggered the downward spiral. Is Dean a drunk or a bore or did Cindy never really love him but Dean was there for her when she was thinking of having an abortion?

Blue Valentine is not an easy film to watch and it drags at times. That said, it is very powerful and heart-breaking. Two things especially make it so. One is the script, which is full of genuine emotional credibility and never falls into the trap of being too clever. The other is the story, with the time-skipping structure proving interesting and the story itself is so well-observed. Blue Valentine is shot beautifully yet with a lot of grit, and the soundtrack is amazing, for one it is one of 2010's best soundtracks. The film is also sharply directed, and the film instead of straightforwardly tracing the rise and fall of their relationship actually contrasts the young couple's hopeful beginnings with their subsequent grinding domestic discord. Some mayn't like this approach, I found it incredibly interesting and thought it worked wonders, considering how much effort was made into making this approach credible. The performances from Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are simply wonderful, their characters are not the most sympathetic characters in the world, nor I don't think were they intended to be, but the performances themselves and the chemistry I couldn't fault. Overall, a very powerful and moving film. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy Heller-Pereira (Michelle Williams) are a married couple. This movie jumps back and forth to show their relationship over time. They have a girl named Frankie. He works menial jobs and she works as a nurse. He's a slacker and she's the tired responsible one. They both come from dysfunctional families. She runs into Bobby Ontario at the liquor store which causes friction between the couple. It turns out that Bobby is her former boyfriend with a big secret between them.

This is a great little indie about love that fades. By the end, it seems that their early flirtations are from another life. Gosling and Williams give subtle but profound performances. Most compelling is that they are about to give two slightly different versions of the same characters. The movie takes it slowly as it unravels this relationship.