According to biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, there are three types of love. Physical love gives us the motivation to search for a partner. Romantic love provides us with the focus necessary to be successful in our conquests. Finally, attachment-based love allows us to tolerate our partner long enough to raise children together. Blue Valentine paints a disturbing portrait of how ephemeral sex and romance can be, and how attachment can weaken us against our better judgement.

We meet Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) as a married couple. He holds a low-income job, smokes, drinks, is unhappy but pretends he’s content. She’s a nurse, beautiful but exhausted, afraid of her husband and unable to confront him. They have a young daughter. Dean is the type of father who uses his child as an excuse to act immaturely. Cindy is too worn-out by her job and her marriage to be an attentive parent. The film uses flashbacks to show how the couple met, how they slept together, how their daughter was nearly aborted, how they tied the knot, how misguided they were. These are the moments Dean and Cindy dwell on in an attempt to understand how they arrived at such desolation.

Causality can be hard to pinpoint, especially within the context of a deteriorated relationship. Dean and Cindy are not overtly articulate, not that defining problems is always helpful in resolving them. Perhaps the fault, if such a word is apt, lies with the couple’s parents. Dean comes from a broken home; Cindy wishes she did, so that she wouldn’t have to witness her father’s volatile temper erupt at the dinner table. Philip Larkin’s unflinching poem ‘This Be The Verse’ comes to mind.

Blue Valentine is a sad picture, by no means an easy watch. It leaves most things uncertain and unsaid, and views emotional maltreatment as a two-way street. The performances from the two leads are extraordinary, and the film exhibits a tenderly naturalistic approach to a difficult subject. In the end, men may be kids, but it takes a strong kind of woman to help us mature.

 

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