It's official: All Good Things and Blue Valentine, two new films starring Ryan Gosling, confirm him as the heir to the "beautiful but tortured" movie persona created by Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and, especially, James Dean in the 1950s. Brooding and beautifully hunky in both these new movies (his first since 2007's criminally overlooked black comedy, Lars and the Real Girl), Gosling exhibits a mix of danger, sullenness, sensuality and tenderness that has become his standard bearer—an irresistible mix for certain moviegoers (this one included). It makes perfect sense that reportedly Gosling's favorite film, 1955's East of Eden, arguably contains the greatest of Dean's three movie performances.
Although All Good Things, which is based on a real-life story of wealth, power and the unsolved murder of the wife of a seriously disturbed scion to a family fortune (Gosling's part), is seriously flawed—due to a convoluted script that seems to be missing whole sections and the miscasting of Kirsten Dunst as the young wife—it's still worth a look. This is thanks to Gosling's alternately creepy but tantalizing portrait of the seriously damaged young heir and his scenes with Frank Langella as his sinister father.
I have no such reservations however, for director David Cianfrance's emotionally searing Blue Valentine, which he co-wrote over a period of years with Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne. The movie is a non-linear portrait of a relationship gone sour that is astonishing in its detailed acting from Gosling and his equally moving co-star, Michelle Williams. As Dean and Cindy—a furniture mover and medical assistant—move toward what might be the end of their romance the biography of their life as a couple is slowly revealed in splintered flashbacks of joy, sexual excitement and pain.
By giving us one piece of the couple's relationship at a time, Cianfrance alters expectations and allegiances as the movie progresses. For example, David has what appears to be a sublime relationship with the couple's daughter, Frankie (the natural and unaffected Faith Wladkya), and we're irritated that Cindy doesn't seem to appreciate his ease and light-hearted abilities with the little girl. However, as the relationship unravels, we come to understand her point of view as well.
The sexual allure the two share for each other is at the heart of the relationship and, in the film's penultimate sequence, David cajoles Cindy into joining him at a fantasy motel for the night, booking the "future" room for their tryst. Like many real-life relationships the night portrays sexual familiarity masquerading as true intimacy among other emotional plights plaguing the couple. Gosling and Williams are fearless in these scenes (the film was at one point given an NC-17 rating) and the willingness of the two actors to go the distance is essential to putting across the difficult material.
Williams matches Gosling's intensity but from a very different place. The more David pushes forward, the more Cindy withholds. Not unlike Gosling, Williams has forged her own path in movies, moving away from traditional leading-lady roles into much more tricky territory. The result has been one memorable performance after another (most recently in Shutter Island) and she's just as much up on the high wire in Blue Valentine as Gosling is.
The risky work by the two stars is enthralling but it's the missing pieces to the relationship that nags at one at the movie's conclusion. (Although Cindy's past is revealed, for example, we don't get nearly as much insight into what makes the rather odd David tick.) On first examination, this would seem to be a flaw in Cianfrance's conception, but I think it's actually inspired. As Blue Valentine points out in its tremendously bittersweet way, we can never entirely know who we're holding in our arms and we may never be sure at what moment they fell for us—or fell away.
Also in theaters this week: In recent months Gwyneth Paltrow has won a host of new fans showing off her vocal chops in a guest spot on Glee and she now returns to a starring role in movies as a country/western singer on the skids who finds herself on the comeback trail after being sought out by a young songwriter in Country Strong. The plot sounds like a tantalizing, female variation on Tender Mercies (with Tim McGraw, Tron Legacy's Garrett Hedlund, and Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester co-starring) but unfortunately the movie wasn't screened in time for Windy City Times' deadline.
Film notes:
—Dyke Delicious, the popular, long-running monthly social/screening event series co-presented by Black Cat Productions and Reeling returns for an eighth season this Saturday, Jan. 8, with An Evening with Coquie Hughes at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark). Hughes is an independent filmmaker whose features have focused on issues pertinent to lesbian and bisexual families in African-American culture, such as Gotta Git My Hair Did, Daughters of the Concrete, If I Wuz Yo Gyrl and the 2010 mockumentary My Mama Said Yo Mama's A Dyke. Hughes will present clips and discuss her micro-budget working methods. Social hour starts at 7 p.m., with the screening at 8 p.m; there's a $10 donation. (Advance RSVP suggested and can be e-mailed to dykedelicious@chicagofilmmakers.org .) Call 773-293-1447 or visit www.chicagofilmmakers.org
—Trouble in Mind, writer-director Alan Rudolph's dark, cool 1985 neo-noir has finally been released by Shout! Factory in a 25th-anniversary special edition. Kris Kristofferson and Lori Singer star in this romantic crime drama that features an ultra-moody synth-jazz trumpet score by Mark Isham. The stellar, quirky cast includes the tragically underused Genevieve Bujold, Keith Carradine, Joe Morton, John Considine and Divine in his finest screen performance out of drag.
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