BEFORE: This was a last-minute addition to the romance chain - on the advice of counsel, I re-classified "Love, Actually" and "New Year's Eve" as holiday films, not romance films. I mean, yes, they are both things, but do I want to watch films in February that are set in December? Those films have been re-scheduled for the end of the year, and something has to replace them. When I saw this film in the listings and made the Ryan Gosling connection from "Crazy, Stupid, Love.", I realized I could get another little actor chain going.
You may wonder why I didn't watch this on Valentine's Day, since it's got "Valentine" right in the name. First off, I didn't have a copy then, but more importantly, it seems like a darker film and I wanted to have a happier tone on the holiday. Plus, it would have messed with my linking.
THE PLOT: The film centers on a contemporary married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "(500) Days of Summer" (Movie #778)
AFTER: I'm marking this as a follow-up since it's another film about the arc of a relationship, and one that bounces around liberally between the different stages of their coming together, and their falling apart.
9 times out of 10, I'm totally against a film that shows scenes out of order - usually because it's done in something close to random order, with little intent other than to confuse instead of inform. BUT this is one of those rare purposes where going non-linear brings more meaning - scenes from early in the relationship are contrasted with the ones later on, and gradually more information is revealed about the true nature of their relationship, and there are some secrets you might expect, and others you might not.
And some of the scenes are raw and tough to watch - particularly scenes of intimacy where one partner is more "into it" than the other. While it wasn't forced sex, at least I don't think it was, it was more like resigned sex, and that's just sad.
Of course, you can expect some change over the course of a 7 (10?)-year span - and Gosling's character, Dean, evolves from a Brooklyn hipster to a Pennsylvania dirtbag - actually, he does hold down jobs in both places, moving furniture or painting houses. But he's more focused on the relationship and being a dad than he is on his career. Which isn't bad, it's just who the character is.
Still, he's a little one-dimensional compared to his wife, Cindy - there's a lot going on under the surface, and there are implications of depression, or possibly past abuse. While she's got a better job and perhaps more ambition, there's also a sense that she feels trapped in her situation. It seems whatever love she had for Dean may be gone, but she's unable to move on because of the effect on both Dean and their daughter. Again, tough to watch.
I bet this film did well at festivals, because it has that darker tone, message of despair, and an ambiguous ending. (Yep, nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance...) The fear with this sort of film, though, is that the negativity on the screen sometimes spills into a general feeling of unease against the film itself, felt by the audience.
Also starring Michelle Williams.
RATING: 4 out of 10 moving vans
No comments:
Post a Comment