Blue Valentine [SQ Inflight Entertainment]

Finally managed to catch this 2010 drama that also skipped our shores, I guess because of the graphic sex scenes. But beneath all that, this is a really depressing love story. The two leads here, Gosling and Williams, really carry the weight of the movie on their shoulders and their chemistry is the real triumph here. You can actually believe these two are falling in love and falling out of love. And the devastation is just so emotional and raw and authentic. Kudos to Williams who really deserve her Oscar nomination here. Sadly, Gosling's role is really more passive in nature and he was not able to aptly convey that passivity to an engaging screen presence. The characters are so flawed and sometimes so annoying that you wonder why did writer/director Derek Cianfrance put them on screen, but perhaps it is also because of all that, that they feel more authentic than the synthetically made-up rom-coms leads by big budget Hollywood studios. Nonetheless, the plot itself tended to be meandering, plodding, melodramatic and occasionally stagnant. So thankfully, we had Williams and Gosling to capture our attention.