Rom-coms are great, but every once in a while, it’s good to see something other than a perfect happy ending. Enter: Blue Valentine, which Brit + Co can exclusively reveal as one of the many titles coming to Netflix in July 2018.
The 2010 drama stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as Dean and Cindy, a couple whose once-loving marriage has eroded under the strain of financial problems and Dean’s drinking. The movie charts their romance from its earliest, most hopeful beginnings through its rocky dissolution, showing that sometimes love doesn’t conquer all.
Director Derek Cianfrance asked the actors to fully immerse themselves in the film, to the point where Gosling and Williams actually lived together (during the day) for about a month. They “celebrated fake Christmas and put up Christmas trees, and baked birthday cakes and bought birthday presents, and went to Sears,” Gosling told Fresh Air in 2010. “We fought all day, and then we’d have to take [our characters’ daughter] Faith to the family fun park … whatever we could do to create real memories, so when it came time to shoot the [last] part of the film, we were drawing on real memories.”
At times, the memories were almost too real. “Most movies, you have to try and forget you’re making a movie, because there are trailers and booms and lights and marks, and it’s everywhere,” he recalled. “And with this, you’re trying to remember that it is a movie, because it’s so easy to get lost in it.”
Both Gosling and Williams earned Golden Globe nominations for their performances in the film. Williams later earned an Oscar nomination, too.
Blue Valentine debuts on Netflix on July 5. Check back on Wednesday, June 20, for the full list of movies, TV shows, and originals hitting the streaming service next month.
(photo via Donald Bowers/Getty Images)
