David recommends . . . BLUE VALENTINE

If you are open to watching a film other than The King's Speech this week then I cannot recommend BLUE VALENTINE highly enough. TKS is a very good film; BLUE VALENTINE is a much better one. This is an excellent, low budget indie which has received considerable plaudits at Sundance and the Golden Globes. It is a searing, emotionally honest tale of a relationship at two stages, one very good, and the other, well, very bad.

What works so well in a very intelligent script is that the two stages, the happy and romantic early days, and the trouble and strife later on, are told in parallel via dramatic intercutting. It's not easy to watch at times but it is always gripping. A strong story, well told.

But the even better reason for seeing BLUE VALENTINE is the exceptional acting by the leads, Michelle Williams as Cindy and Ryan Gosling as Dean. Williams is turning into one of the best young actresses around and has an leading actress Oscar nomination for this role.

Williams is less known to many of you out there than other actresses because she is not Hollywood blockbuster material. She emerged in teen TV rom-drama Dawson's Creek (alongside Katie 'Mrs Cruise' Holmes), but came to movie prominence as a Heath Ledger's girlfriend in Brokeback Mountain (her first Oscar nomination).

Since then Williams has set about becoming the Queen of US Indie Cinema. She impressed in 2008's Wendy and Lucy as a metaphorically lost young woman wandering the Oregon landscape looking for her literally lost dog while trying to get to Alaska. She was even better in Mammoth (2009) as the harassed young doctor and mother who realises her long working hours mean her daughter is becoming more attached to her Phillipino nanny than to her. Both are excellent films which merit your attention if you can catch them.

In BLUE VALENTINE Williams portrays another mother, with her own ambitions (medical school) but struggling to make her own decisions rather than yield to events which overtake her. Included in which is Ryan Nelson's Dean, all manic energy and frantically romantic wooing.

Gosling gives an even stronger performance in my view, though no Oscar nomination for him, though, like Williams, he was nominated for a Golden Globe. A great performance because it is his character who changes the most, or perhaps the most vividly. For as we intercut between the two periods of the relationship the differences between Dean's behaviour and appearance are shocking.

All Dean wants is to be with the two objects of his love, Cindy and daughter Frankie. But he and Cindy are both changing, which asks the age-old questions: will they remain compatible, and can they stay together?



Not just another relationship in trouble story. BLUE VALENTINE is smart and engaging and thus a welcome antidote to appalling rom-com pap like Love and Other Drugs. The story contains a sudden reveal half way through which you will not anticipate even though I've just told you there is one. This is intelligent and mature film making which explores the difficulties of relationships, ironically via two young and less well-known actors. Please go and see it.