The Place Beyond the Pines.

When I first saw Blue Valentine (2010) I was not sure if I liked it, no so with Derek Cianfrance third feature film The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), which again features Ryan Gosling, who seems to get better ever time I see him. This new film is American film noir at its very best, a movie any serious cineaste should make every effort to see. Everything is right about it, from the wonderfully convincing acting to the feel of British born Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography, who was also responsible for another film noir The Killer Inside Me (2010) .  But its backbone is its brilliant narrative that could have been written by Denis Lahane instead of Cianfrance and his co-writers Ben Coccio and Darius Marder. Totally compelling, a story in three acts about the unbreakable bond between fathers and their sons. A film full of surprises, with just the right amount of sentimentality.

A story of fathers and their sons.

New York cop Avery Cross.

This totally captivating movie is set in the upstate New York town of Schenectady, which incidentally is where the title of the film comes from it’s a Mohawk word meaning ‘place beyond the pine plains’. The first of the two fathers that dominate our story is Luke Glanton (Gosling) who scrapes a living as part of a travelling carnival show where he performs a wall of death stunt act. Passing through Schenectady he decides to look up an old flame Romina, played by Eva Mendes who I last saw in Leos Corax’s Holy Motors. On visiting her family home he discovers he has a six-month-old son called Jason. Luke decides to give up his nomadic life style and look after his newly found family. He obtains a badly paid job as a mechanic in a rural car repair shop. His employer, the wonderfully expressive Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, spots the former stunt mans potential and the pair carry out a string of lucrative bank robberies which places Luke Glanton within the radar of the second of our two fathers the ambitious New York cop Avery Cross, another breakthrough role for Silver Linings Playback Bradley Cooper. 

Blue Valentine


Monday night’s RBC Film Club showing of the critically acclaimed Blue Valentine (2010) is an interesting independent drama. This romantic/relationship story involves the gradual disintegration of marriage between Cindy, a medical student who desperately wants to be a Doctor and Dean, a removal operative from Brooklyn. Their doomed relationship starts when they agree to marry following Cindy’s pregnancy. The film uses flashbacks and intersecting narratives over a seven-year period, which is quite confusing especially at the beginning of the film even though Jean-Luc Godard once commented that a film should have a beginning, middle and an end but not necessarily in that order. Best scene comes at the start of their relationship where Cindy does an impromptu dance in a shop doorway at night as Dean plays the ukulele and sings the Ink Spots classic “You always Hurt the One You Love” bringing a lump to this old romantic’s throat! It’s basically a sad story of love turning sour between two well-intentioned young people. Dean ends up drinking too much and Cindy’s ambitions gradually disintegrate.

Cindy and Dean.

This is Derek Cianfrance second feature film, an American director and writer best known for TV documentary work and stars Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson 2006, Lars and the Real Girl 2007) as Dean Perira and Michelle Williams (The Station Agent 2003, Brokeback Mountain 2005, I’m Not There 2007, Shutter Island 2010) as Cindy Heller. Williams is set the play Marilyn Munroe in the upcoming British drama My Week with Marilyn. The heart of the film is the soundtrack composed by Grizzly Bear a Brooklyn based folk rock band with the actors allowed to pick some of their own music including one of the films feature songs You and Me by Penny and the Quarters a rather obscure track that makes it a good reason to buy the soundtrack! This movie has some great acting from the leads but your find that it’s impossible to empathise with either of the characters. I really wanted to like this film but strangely I’m not sure I did, perhaps another viewing would help?