You and Me, Nobody Baby But You and Me: The Exhausting Helplessness of Trying to Find Love Lost in Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" (2010)

The disintegration of a marriage, or of any loving relationship, never happens overnight. It happens gradually, painfully stripping slivers and then chunks of love until the rip is so big and exhaustion so high that warning signs can no longer be ignored. Michelle Williams, as the spontaneous, ambitious, radiating and sweet as candy Cindy, portrays beautifully this exhaustion and transformation into a self without that integral piece. "There is nothing left for you here. Nothing left" - she screams with hopelessness to her husband Dean, subtly demonstrating that she digged and digged and tried to resurrect the once encompassing, growing, magical love. But it is not Cindy's fault, nor it is Dean's. Nor there is one defining moment or event that tripped the love from growing. It is the tiny toxins that creep in, almost unnoticeably, and that for some reason keep multiplying. And the toxin-free period, the falling in love period, is beauty in every shot. Their falling in love is all that you feel when love unexpectedly happens. Uncommon. Original. Momentous. Flying. Together. And the erosion is all that love isn't. It is common. Just like all relationship disintegrations happen. With the hopeless grip, unable to change or steer. Even in the desperate act of attempted salvaging of the love, in the symbollically named themed-motel room "The Future Room". The future without a future. Alternating past and present sequences show us the beauty of the beginnings and the twisted painful beauty of the endings. Both worlds, the young, foolish, playful in love, energy and life giving world and the adult, routine, daily grind, exhausting and energy sucking world are portrayed with purity, rawness, truth - cinema verite style (if I may say). The camera, the cinematography, the music, the details of the past revealed in the right moments, the very perfect casting, the labor of love project for all - makes it worth the 12 year and 67 script drafts of wait. Michelle and Ryan are too good, too magnetic to give us just 110 minutes of perfect shots and scenes. When you look at every screen shot, look at every poster (there are many, and they are all equally magnetic, even the distributor couldn't choose only one), there is this unconscious assumption that makes it all seem like this is the film and the story that was always meant to happen with these two anchors. The screen awaits them for more.