Salon.com > Blue Valentine

Ryan Gosling on the violence of femininity

Mon, 23 May 2011 17:01:00 +0000

CANNES, France -- "Drive," the stylish Los Angeles heist movie that has emerged as a smash hit at this year's Cannes Film Festival, started with a first date. That getting-to-know-you encounter was between Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling, who had directorial approval on this long-simmering adaptation of James Sallis' noirish novella. In conversations here, both men have described their relationship in highly sexualized terms, while occasionally resorting to awkward reminders that in fact they're both straight, ha ha ha, and nothing like that really happened.

As they tell the first-date story now, Refn was ill with the flu and after they met for dinner Gosling wound up driving him home. (Refn does not drive, an irresistible if irrelevant footnote to this movie.) The ride was uncomfortably silent until Gosling switched on the radio, and REO Speedwagon's "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" began to play. Refn cranked it up and started singing along. Suddenly he understood the movie, he told Gosling: A guy driving around in Los Angeles at night, listening to the radio.

Cannes: Ryan Gosling’s dazzling, sleek new thrill ride

Fri, 20 May 2011 20:21:00 +0000

CANNES, France -- Take an immensely skillful young European director with a worldwide cult following, a hot young North American actor with considerable cultural cachet and a classic Los Angeles heist-gone-wrong story that recalls both Roger Corman's B-movie aesthetic and the glossy Hollywood spectacles of Michael Mann. You probably know already whether that's a movie you'd line up around the block to see or one you'd pay to avoid, but either way it's called "Drive," it stars Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling (of "Half Nelson" and "Blue Valentine") and it was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (whose career ranges from the insane medieval fantasy "Valhalla Rising" to the campy, stylized prison film "Bronson"), single-handedly trying to redeem Denmark's honor after l'affaire Lars von Trier.

Pick of the week: Michelle Williams in “Meek’s Cutoff”

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:01:00 +0000

"Meek's Cutoff" is one of those movies that you're going to make a decision about within the first minute. You're either in or you're out, and you'll know which. As an opening credit stitched in embroidery tells us -- and it really is embroidery, not some digital facsimile -- we're on the Oregon Trail, in 1845. Director Kelly Reichardt's opening shot lasts at least a minute, and shows us a group of nearly indistinguishable men and women in the middle distance, wearing the shabby clothes of 19th-century emigrants, as they get their cattle and wagons across a chest-deep river. (The striking, square-screen cinematography is by Chris Blauvelt.)

Great Oscar debate: Is Natalie Portman overrated?

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Matt Zoller Seitz: First things first: This has been an absolutely tremendous year for performances by young female actress in complex leading roles. You've got Michelle Williams in two notable movies, and Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone," and Mary Tsoni in "Dogtooth," and Kate Jarvis in Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," which you liked, too. And Hailee Steinfield, who's nominated as best supporting actress for the Coen brothers' "True Grit" remake but should be in this category, because as Mattie Ross, she carries the movie. It's totally her movie. Every minute is about the young adolescent heroine, Mattie Ross, and what this adventure meant to her, and took from her. Yet she's in the supporting category, and Jeff Bridges, whose Rooster Cogburn is clearly a supporting character, is in the lead category! It's maybe the most absurd example of tactical nomination displacement since Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People," who was nominated for supporting actor (and won) even though that movie is almost entirely about his character.

Winners and losers of today’s Oscar noms

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:20:00 +0000

If the Kabuki theater of the 2011 Oscar race is to yield any major surprises -- let alone any of the half-baked sociological talking points so beloved by the media -- that wasn't evident in Tuesday morning's nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards. In fact, if there's anything strange about this year's Oscars, it's how predictable they appear.

Conventional wisdom has held for months that "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network," a pair of handsome and talky comedy-drama blends with biographical and historical roots, were the best-picture front-runners, and so it appears. (Furthermore, the latter will win, and I don't care how much tea-leaf reading to the contrary you hear in coming weeks.) Best actress is perceived as a race between Annette Bening's lesbian mom in "The Kids Are All Right" and Natalie Portman's demented ballerina in "Black Swan," and best actor as a race between Colin Firth, for his richly sympathetic portrayal of the stuttering King George VI in "The King's Speech," and, well, nobody in particular. Done and done.

“Blue Valentine”: An extraordinary and sexually frank romance

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:30:00 +0000

Having played every major film festival in the Western Hemisphere, become a talking point for the movie world's chattering class, and been gifted with a torrent of free publicity thanks to its (now rescinded) NC-17 rating, "Blue Valentine" is finally ready to face the public. Whether the public is genuinely interested in a sexually and emotionally frank film about a working-class American marriage that channels improv theater from one direction and European art cinema from another is an open question. (No matter what you may have read elsewhere, the NC-17 had little or nothing to do with oral sex. "Blue Valentine" features one intense sex scene with considerable nudity that raises the issue of marital rape, and as usual the MPAA freaked out about honest depictions of ambiguous adult sexuality. Somebody may go down on somebody else, but that's hardly the central issue.)

Film awards’ hilarious Michelle Williams mix-up

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:45:00 +0000

Like other agglomerations of movie reviewers across the land, the Broadcast Film Critics Association is in the process of selecting its year-end award winners. The BFCA has nominated Michelle Williams in the forthcoming (and no longer NC-17-rated) "Blue Valentine" for its best-actress award. I've seen the film, and she's an admirable choice. But the photo the BFCA chose to illustrate its nomination on Monday morning was, shall we say, less expected:

(In case you're confused: That Michelle Williams, former member of R&B supergroup Destiny's Child, is not this Michelle Williams, who stars opposite Ryan Gosling in "Blue Valentine" and is the mother of the late Heath Ledger's child.)

The NC-17 rating’s perverse failure

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:09:00 +0000

Things generally move swiftly in Hollywood. Promising new television series are canceled after two episodes. Much-hyped A-list movies are made or broken with their opening weekends. And yet, a ludicrous, worthless film rating that has been broken almost from the start has endured for 20 years.

The NC-17 -- or really, threat of it -- exists mainly to spook filmmakers into trimming a blurred glimpse of penis so that the studios won't lose those lucrative teen dollars and shut themselves out of contention for major awards. Its latest hapless would-be victim is "Blue Valentine," the Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams romantic drama that's been generating breathless buzz since it debuted at Sundance last winter. Two Oscar-nominated stars, promising young writer director Derek Cianfrance, an angsty-sexy tale of marital discord – it all seemed like art-house money in the bank. Then the MPAA slapped it with its scarlet letters, supposedly based on a few moments of Gosling's character performing some anguished cunnilingus on his wife, a scene that doesn't even depict nudity. Unclean!

Early Oscar odds: “Inception” vs. “Social Network”

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000

Question: Is it too unbearably early to begin thinking about the annual winter circus that is Oscar season? Answer: Never! Or at least not after the Gotham Independent Film Awards nominations, the unofficial starting gun of award-mania, have gotten us started.

Let me save your comment-typin' fingers a workout and stipulate the following: No, the Oscars are no indication of quality, historically speaking; yes, the best films of the year (whether by my standards or yours) are often overlooked; and yes, covering movies by focusing overmuch on the Oscar race resembles the horse-race coverage of American politics and signifies the downfall of journalism in particular and civilization in general. But you want to know about it anyway, so let's move on. (Check out my Movie List for an utterly subjective and totally non-market-driven ranking of the year's best and worst movies.)