Perhaps more than any other film in 2010, I have eagerly anticipated the arrival of "Blue Valentine." After superlative press at Sundance, the film fell into the most ridiculous and unnecessary scandal of the year when the MPAA branded the movie with a NC-17 rating. A film filled with grown-up emotions and intimacies, "Blue Valentine" is an unlikely target for such a rating (in an era filled with movies of extreme violence, gore, and much more nudity) other than the fact that "Blue Valentine" feels so extraordinarily real. Luckily, the rating was rightfully overturned so the picture could enjoy a wider release and the benefits of a more extensive advertising campaign. "Blue Valentine" is a sophisticated and smart entertainment for adult audiences brought to realistic fruition by the stellar Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. Naturalistic and utterly believable, rarely has a film been able to dissect a relationship with such savvy attention to detail.

You might have heard that "Blue Valentine" is a story about the dissolution of a relationship, about a couple growing apart. I would contend, however, that it is instead a contemporary love story. Set in alternate timelines, "Blue Valentine" charts Gosling and Williams both at the beginning of their courtship as well as when their marriage is nearing an end. Shot in an easy improvised style, the earlier moments have charming tenderness while the later segments have a quiet poignancy and sadness. Instead of opting for big scenes and pinpointing singular causes, "Blue Valentine" simply has our couple drifting down different paths. Neither is the particular cause of the estrangement, but Williams pulls back emotionally as Gosling holds on frantically. Both want what's best for each other and their daughter, although they no longer see eye to eye about what that is. Truthful, excruciating, and intimate--"Blue Valentine" plants us in the middle.

Gosling and Williams are, in a word, extraordinary. I have, for many years, declared Ryan Gosling perhaps the best actor of his generation. Ever since he burst onto the film scene in the controversial "The Believer," Gosling has eschewed being a mainstream "star." Heck, after "The Notebook," another actor might have taken a very different career path. But Gosling, despite a couple of disappointing forays into big budget Hollywood, has remained true to his indie roots. And Williams has left her "Dawson's Creek" past way behind her as she continues to choose interesting and meaningful projects. They work off each other with ease. The film was improvisational in nature and many scenes are made real by Williams and Gosling playing off one another extemporaneously. Now that's true indie cinema!

Anyone who's been in a relationship and/or a break up will be able to identify with the inherent realness behind "Blue Valentine." There are little moments of silliness, big moments of anger, and everything in between. "Blue Valentine" expertly juxtaposes the different stages of this coupling and the results are both terrifically funny and awesomely sad. Pretty much like life itself, huh? A great modern romance about breaking up, "Blue Valentine" is easily one of the year's least contrived and most heartfelt films. And it contains two of the year's best performances! About 4 1/2 stars--rounding up for Gosling and Williams. KGHarris, 1/11.

BLUE VALENTINE is a low budget film, telling us about the beginning and end of a marriage. It stars Ryan Gosling & Michelle Williams. The movie shows us "now" over the space of just a couple of days, as we see this couple along with their roughly 5 year old child, going through mundane tasks and the final arguments that lead to their split. The film also bounces back to the few weeks or months from their first meeting until the day they get married. We see them about 5 or 6 years younger, naïve & sweetly in-love. When we bounce to the present, we seem them harried, worried and barely able to tolerate each other.

Some would say that the film makes a broad statement on how love or marriage can go from sweet to sour. How we sabotage our happiness. How difficult it is to make a happy marriage (or for the true cynics, how IMPOSSIBLE it is).

I took NO global message from the film. It is powerful, but it is very small in scope. This is because the filmmaker Derek Cianfrance has made a deeply SPECIFIC movie. Gosling & Williams give VERY lived-in performances where we very much feel we are looking at a very particular couple going through very particular joys and disappointments. We feel like we're getting a very intimate peek into what makes this particular couple tick. Thus, it becomes nearly impossible to extrapolate the film to the general subject of "marriage." This is not a failing, per se...but I've certainly read comments on the film that imply that very thing. That is absurd, quite frankly. Each marriage has its own rhythms, pulses, occurrences & secrets. The relationship depicted here feels real, because it is so specific. It also feels small.

To me, the main reason to see this film is for the performances. Both stars do their best work here...by a long way. Williams has given some nice performances in the past (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, WENDY & LUCY)...but often her performances have been of women more or less drained by life. Williams, particularly in the early scenes, is full of undirected ambition and spirit. She's eager to get away from her terrible homelife and is smart enough to have career ambitions, even though this is not something that runs in her family. She's very close to her grandmother, but terrorized by her parents, who have vicious arguments that she must endure. She makes lousy choices in men. Gosling is new to the big city (NYC) and naïve. He's poorly educated, and not terribly ambitious. He's not seen anything for himself other than getting away from his own sad family situation. He's a terribly nice guy (his early scene with a senior citizen he doesn't even know is touching, heartbreaking and puts us forever on his side)...but has little to offer other than devoted, puppy-dog love. The two have a passionate and convincing early romance...but when they take the step to marriage, we also see that from the first day, the seeds of end of the marriage have already been planted. I won't give specifics...but let's just say that not enough of their paths are converging for this thing to really have a shot. For them, marriage is an escape from demons...and we see they are bringing some of the demons right along with them.

In the later scenes, as they fight and old bitterness comes out...we are able to pretty much guess just how the five years since the wedding day have gone by. Gosling has spent his time in menial jobs, showing no inclination to move up. Williams, because she now has a family, has put her ambitions on the back burner. She's a nurse, but she's also by far the primary breadwinner. The two seem to have a comfortable lower middle-class life...but their paths have diverged (Gosling is barely even on a path.)

I suspect the film wants us to feel good and bad for each of them in equal measure. To not take sides...but to simply feel bad for both and to wish they could find a way to get it together. However, my experience and that of my wife, was that we very much took sides (both with the same person)...and this somewhat diminishes the power of the film. It's not meant to be a good vs. bad movie...but it sort of ends up that way.

This is not a happy film...but there's plenty of wry humor. (And if you've heard about the graphic sex that initially got this film an NC-17...you'll likely scratch your head at that. The sex in BLACK SWAN was far more "shocking.") It's also not as depressing as perhaps you've heard. Again, because we're watching a film that ISN'T about our own marriage. Our marriage is very different. We see this couple and feel for them...but we don't sit there and think, "OMG, this is SO much like my marriage." (Thank goodness.) Granted, this is a very personal response from me...others may feel differently.

You should absolutely see the film, though. It features two of the very best American performances this year. And despite seeming like we're just watching home movies, it is actually very artfully photographed. And as a bonus, it features the most outrageous cheap hotel room in film history. (Don't ask...just see for yourself.)

I just finished watching this film and decided to jot some thoughts down into words. Lots of spoilers - don't read if you haven't seen the film-

There were some parts of that movie that really touched home - like the part where he meets the family and says to her, "I'm not good enough for you" and she's like, "stop you're hurting my feelings." Then the part where he's trying to cheering her up because he's finally spending a weekend with his wife, and all she's trying to do is make him a better man by asking him what his hopes and dreams are, and the two conflicting intentions consistently building a tension so palpable you could almost feel it through the screen.

When they were in love it was as if the world opened up to them, and even when she'd fallen out of love with him, there were still glimpses of caring and affection. The part where they looked for his ring in the bushes together, or when he punched that smug doctor in the face.

The part where he asked her to have a baby with him, and she shut him down - it's crazy how he tries to save the marriage and imagines a life where it's so simple and lovey dovey. It's not that he's not complex, it's that he has actually figured out some of the finer things in life, figured out what's important - family, and love. But she's much more complex than that and the audience only got a glimpse of it. Their pasts speak volumes as to who they are as characters - he comes from a simple family and does a simple job, and she comes from a history of complexity and needs that in order to thrive.

I can't help but ask Ryan's character, "How do you recover from a situation like that?" From a broken marriage with a child who's not yours, when you try and try and everything seems to fail. When you come in as the white in shining armor, and leave depleted, waking away from the only love that you ever knew. Like a silhouette of memories just walking away.

The part where the kid chases after Dean and tries to pull his arm back, almost like she intuitively knew that this might been the end - that part killed me.

Why is Michelle so good at portraying these tragic tragic complex characters? I don't get it. She was great in this movie, and now nominated for an Oscar for her role in Marilyn. She has got to be one of the most typcasted "sensual" characters in history.

Ryan Gosling delivers a very good performance. The dynamic between his outer strength and inner weaknesses has to be noted. He has childlike qualities about him that brings out his charm, his confidence exhumed at first when he first met her but eventually faded as his love for her and her consistent rejection chewed away at his ego. He really just needed a good friend to tell him "hey back the f off, she cares about you but you gotta let her breathe, you're suffocating her." He needed someone to tell him "Hey she's following through with her dreams, she wants that for you too, she doesn't want a husband who wastes away at a mindless job when he's capable of ten times more."

In the end he asks, "what will it take? What can I do? I'll change, you tell me what you want me to do?" And she could have said, "Follow your own dreams, be a man, don't let me carry the financial and mental stability of this relationship!" And maybe it would have worked, but instead all that was left between them was the silence, and the memories of the love that was but could never be again.