As ideal first date movies go,
Blue Valentine is absolutely not the one to take your potential spouse to, unless you both get off on the misery, destruction and downright horribleness of a failed relationship. Although frankly if that's the case you're probably the kind of person who would rather spend a first date at an abattoir rather than a cinema, which means you're reading the wrong blog.
That's not to say
Blue Valentine is a wrist-slashing bleakfest; it's actually witty and charming but also brutally honest. Cutting between the cockle-warming start and heartbreaking collapse of a four-year relationship, it sets Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling the challenge of playing characters at both ends of the hopeful / hopeless spectrum, and they're both incredible.
The script contains more comedy than you would expect from such a potentially depressing story, not to mention the second-most un-PC child molestor joke I've ever heard (not that there's an abundance of PC child molestor jokes) and it's intelligently directed by first-timer and amateur Ryan Gosling lookalike Derek Cianfrance.
Not only that but at as a bonus you get to see Ryan Gosling in one of the great movie jumpers of our time,
and you discover what the inside of a robot's vagina looks like. If either of those things crop up in any other films at this year's LFF I'll be very surprised.
In other news, having praised Ryan Rodney Reynolds for his amazing turn in
Buried, it would be remiss of me not to point this out:
Blue Valentine is showing at 6pm on Friday 15th October at Vue Leicester Square and at 1.30pm on Sunday 17th October at the NFT on the South Bank.
