Monday, February 13, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Blue Valentine
Sessional time again. (adequate reason for why I'm sitting here tapping at my keyboard!)
We're in the Valentine's Day week again, (Rose Day, Teddy Bear Day? haha, no clue) so going by the name, the movie seems appropriate.
Except that it isn't.
Basically a movie about how a marriage collapses, the narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to illustrate finally the fact that the marriage was doomed right from the beginning. It starts inauspiciously enough with a little girl calling desperately for her dog which the mother finds dead on the road, later. There are too many things wrong with their marriage; in short order: first he criticizes her cooking, blames her for the dog's death, wants to go to a cheesy motel to rejuvenate their relationship while she couldn't care less. She then meets her ex-boyfriend on the way which leads them to quarrel with her complaining he twists everything she's saying. It's worse once they reach the motel. The sex scene is painful: it's too obvious to us that he's trying too hard and she just keeps rejecting him. In the little conversation they have in the garish 'Future Room' , we see that she seems to resents the fact that he drinks in the morning and is a house painter with no worldly ambition. (A flashback in the middle of this shows their first date, which is very cute and RomComish: him playing a ukulele and singing while she tap dances.)They can't get it together sexually and end up hopelessly drunk and in different rooms.
By this time the flashbacks show too that they were together when she found out she was pregnant, she'd had an astonishing number of partners(20!), he knew he wasn't the father but wanted to marry her anyway, he got beaten up by the ex boyfriend (and father of their daughter) for that reason, he's from a hopelessly different background from her(high school dropout vs premed student) and he feels he isn't good enough for her. In fact the only reason they got married was because they were in 'lou', she was pregnant and he was there!!!! When she gets a call to come into work next morning(she became a nurse not a doctor, another spike in the marriage I'll bet), she leaves a note and leaves, prompting him to show up at her workplace drunk, making a scene, hitting the doctor and getting her fired.
She's done, Done, DONE. And wants a divorce. Go figure!
During the final argument, a nice touch is of flashbacks that show them radiantly happy at their (court) wedding.
Falling in. Falling out.
The END.
We're in the Valentine's Day week again, (Rose Day, Teddy Bear Day? haha, no clue) so going by the name, the movie seems appropriate.
Except that it isn't.
Basically a movie about how a marriage collapses, the narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to illustrate finally the fact that the marriage was doomed right from the beginning. It starts inauspiciously enough with a little girl calling desperately for her dog which the mother finds dead on the road, later. There are too many things wrong with their marriage; in short order: first he criticizes her cooking, blames her for the dog's death, wants to go to a cheesy motel to rejuvenate their relationship while she couldn't care less. She then meets her ex-boyfriend on the way which leads them to quarrel with her complaining he twists everything she's saying. It's worse once they reach the motel. The sex scene is painful: it's too obvious to us that he's trying too hard and she just keeps rejecting him. In the little conversation they have in the garish 'Future Room' , we see that she seems to resents the fact that he drinks in the morning and is a house painter with no worldly ambition. (A flashback in the middle of this shows their first date, which is very cute and RomComish: him playing a ukulele and singing while she tap dances.)They can't get it together sexually and end up hopelessly drunk and in different rooms.
By this time the flashbacks show too that they were together when she found out she was pregnant, she'd had an astonishing number of partners(20!), he knew he wasn't the father but wanted to marry her anyway, he got beaten up by the ex boyfriend (and father of their daughter) for that reason, he's from a hopelessly different background from her(high school dropout vs premed student) and he feels he isn't good enough for her. In fact the only reason they got married was because they were in 'lou', she was pregnant and he was there!!!! When she gets a call to come into work next morning(she became a nurse not a doctor, another spike in the marriage I'll bet), she leaves a note and leaves, prompting him to show up at her workplace drunk, making a scene, hitting the doctor and getting her fired.
She's done, Done, DONE. And wants a divorce. Go figure!
During the final argument, a nice touch is of flashbacks that show them radiantly happy at their (court) wedding.
Falling in. Falling out.
The END.
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