Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a twofer of Sundance reviews for ya’. I paired these particular movies together because they are polar opposite looks at romantic relationships, one featuring the darkest of the dark side and the other optimistic and uplifting.
Let’s start dark so we can end on a note that doesn’t make us all want to slit our wrists in the bathtub.
Blue Valentine, which just got picked up by The Weinstein Co., stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a young couple who are having some marital problems. The hook for this movie is in how they portray the dissolving of this relationship. Co-writer/Director Derek Cianfrance choose to parallel the end of the relationship with the story of how they fell in love, which really sticks it in and twists. And by it, I mean a theoretical knife, not a weiner, you sickos.
By splitting the narrative like that Cianfrance really does underscore the tragedy of a failing relationship. It’s not exactly a new concept… ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND does something very similar, but the difference between the two films is night and day. Cianfrance goes for a very realistic tone and setting whereas Gondry’s film was more fantastic, cerebral. As a result, I feel Eternal Sunshine has much more rewatch value, but the point is that Blue Valentine doesn’t just feel like an imitation of that story.
It’s funny, after talking with Cinemablend’s lovely and talented Katey Rich I’ve noticed there’s a gender split regarding this movie. My faithful pal, Kraken, didn’t ever buy the relationship because he felt Michelle Williams’ character is just a dreary bitch throughout the whole movie, yet Katey felt a connection to Williams’ character. She sympathized with her whereas Kraken and I both sympathized with Gosling’s character.
Is it just a gender thing or are women responding to the movie differently than men? I can’t tell you, but I think it’s inarguable that if the filmmakers intended for us to connect with anybody it’s with Gosling. He’s the passive one, the guy trying to hold on to the relationship as Williams falls out of love with him. We also see much more of him before their relationship starts. The dude wears his emotions on his sleeve whereas Williams doesn’t have any emotion to wear, it seems.
But then again that’s all coming from the perspective of a guy… and a guy who has had relationships turn cold. In fact, this movie kind of portrays an amalgam of my two biggest relationships… one petered out after 4 years and the other ran hot and passionate, but was too full of crazy to sustain itself for long. There are elements of both in this movie.
I’m not going to paint Williams as a total bitch in the movie because she’s not. Her character is just emotionally detached and as a result does some really cold shit to her husband who is trying to make it work. I think if the filmmakers had given us a little more time with her in the flashbacks it would have made a world of difference in getting me to invest in the character.
Williams herself is fantastic in the movie. Film after film she’s proving herself one of our better actresses, which I never would have guessed from her Dawson’s Creek days.
Gosling is likewise great and adds a lot of lightness to a dark as shit movie. His interactions with their young daughter, played by the cute-as-a-button Faith Wladyka, are childlike themselves and you can tell the two share a deep connection. He can relate to his daughter without even trying and yet when it comes to connecting to his wife it seems he can’t ever get past her shields.
It’s interesting to note that Gosling left THE LOVELY BONES and took this as there are some really interesting similarities in the story, at least on the surface level… both characters watch their worlds crumble around them. Watching Gosling in this movie is almost like watching a “what could have been” for Lovely Bones. He would have added a very different dynamic, that’s for sure.
Dark, depressing, but real… BLUE VALENTINE ain’t exactly typical multiplex fare, but it will make you think and it will evoke a reaction. It’s not a pretty look at relationships, but it’s not a dishonest one, either.
happythankyoumoreplease, on the other hand, is a much more optimistic look at love and human beings relating to each other. It’s also a bit more standard, but succeeds largely on the charm of writer/director/star Josh Radnor of How I Met Your Mother fame.
When the movie first started I didn’t think I was going to like it. There were so many threads going and I was worried it was going to turn into yet another New York City set multiple-stories-that-all-somehow-connect type movie… where the secondary storylines were taking away from the main one. The bad thing is I was enjoying the main story, focused on Sam (Radnor), an author who is struggling to make the transition from short stories to novels, who watches as a kid is accidentally left behind on the subway… The dude tries to do the right thing in getting the kid back to his mother, but the child isn’t responsive. He just won’t speak.
Turns out his home life, in foster care, isn’t exactly loving and Radnor decides to take the kid in. Yes, it’s illegal and yes, it’s an act of kindness that comes from a selfish place… Radnor’s lonely and he’s also searching for some real life hardship stories to flesh out the lead character in his novel.
Michael Algieri plays this kid, Rasheen, and at 9 years old is already a great, expressive, but subtle actor. I liked the chemistry between Radnor and Algieri, I liked how they bounced off of each other. So when we cut away to the two other story lines (one following Sam’s friend Annie (Malin Akerman) suffering from Alopecia (can’t grow hair), and another following his cousin (Zoe Kazan) who is torn between the town she loves and the man she loves) I was a little impatient. I wasn’t as involved with Akerman or Kazan’s storylines and I wanted to get back to the Radnor, Algieri and Kate Mara’s storyline.
Thankfully the more their stories progressed, the more interested I became in both Akerman and Kazan’s characters.
Akerman is a bit of a hypocrite… she longs to be viewed as beautiful (which she is even with no eyebrows and a bald head), but writes off the kind of geeky, but sincere office mate that pines for her, played by Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) because he’s a dweeb.
Kazan’s boyfriend, played by Pablo Schreiber, is a goofy guy, too, and one that gets an offer to move to LA, which Kazan is diametrically opposed to. She loves New York, it’s her home, but she loves him, too. Of all the duos in the movie these two ended up being my favorite precisely because there’s no cruelty, intended or not, in their hearts. They fight, but it’s more like a debate and when their situation gets even more complicated all that does is drive them closer together. It’s a very sweet, heart-warming story and one that was desperately needed after watching the crash and burn of Blue Valentine.
All these characters are in the same circle, so it doesn’t feel like a random people crossing paths type story.
The main relationship following Radnor, the kid and the hot red-headed waitress/singer played by Kate Mara is also solid, but a bit less dark… which will probably mean it’s the audience favorite because not everybody as sappy as I am. There’s a lot of hesitancy in their union made even more complicated by the “random black child sleeping on the sofa.”
But ultimately all three stories are about optimistic romance, the belief that we all deserve to be loved and to love others. It’s a very sweet tale and while it doesn’t exactly break new ground of set the world on fire it’s populated with enough talented actors and solid writing that it proves to be very charming… especially for my fellow romantics out there.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
| 
