"...girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option..."

Is life is about work, love or family?
What is life about and what is a relationship about?
Why do we feel one way about a person in the past or present and why does this feeling change throughout time?
Does anyone have an answer to those questions? If not get in line behind director and co-writer of the movie "Blue Valentine", Derek Cianfrance.
A romantic drama set in Brooklyn, New York and Pennsylvania lets us explore the turbulent love life of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams).
We enter their lives on the verge of disaster, and every bit of stress in their marriage, brings us back to the opposite times. The further they push each other away in the present, the closer they become in the past. The movie switches back and forth between present and past.
Cindy who has the ambition to become become a doctor someday, is a realist and differs from Dean who has a more romantic ambitions and is a dreamer. He falls for Cindy the moment he sees her and never ceases to love her. But her perspectives change throughout time, and ironically Dean foretells Cindy's character change at some point in the movie: "I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we're resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I'd be an idiot if I didn't marry this girl she's so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option... 'Oh he's got a good job.' I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who's got a good job and is gonna stick around."
This quote is an important trigger for the whole movie and it is the perfect description of Dean's character and the character of the girl he is looking for, who should be anything but the type of girl he just described. He thought Cindy was like that, since the one thing he kept on saying after encountering her for the first time was that she is different.
The plot of the movie asks questions that are essential in our lives as well when it comes to relationships and the expectations we have of each other in love, marriage and while starting a family.
But the movie does not only overwhelm with its simple, but yet abstract plot, but also with its cinematography. The contrast between time and love is  shown through the use of color in the movie. The lighting and vivd color use of the scenes from the past mystifies the whole love and has a dream like effect on us, whereas in contrast to it the present is depicted in a rather gloomy, dark lightened and moody colored way, making it ideal for the viewer to sense the couples emotional states visually.
The change in mise-en-scène is a further symbol for the change in their love, between past and present. They spend time in rather authentic places during their first encounters, making it seem the perfect love story, where in contrast to that in the present their surrounding, their house and the theme motel they go to in order to ignite their love, reflects a dark and weary surrounding.
Cinematography and Mise-en-Scène function like a mirror, they reflect the characters their inner feelings.
The movie is certainly an interesting watch for everyone he wants to see a love movie of a different sort and that has truth to it. It is also a movie for the eye, with a nice cinematography and mise-en-scène that plays a big part in telling the story and detecting the emotion of the characters. A very well directed movie with outstanding performances by  Ryan Gossling and Michelle Williams, who both once again proved that they are one of the most promising actors in Hollywood. To sum up, "Blue Valentine" is a powerful and heartbreaking movie where everyone can find a part of themselves in. Well crafted, well written and well acted, there is nothing this movie lacks except more recognition.