The ultimate dump movie. If you are invited to this one, its over. Acrimoniously. Best thing is: refuse the invitation, go on your own, and take something sharp with you so you have the option to slit your wrists on the way home.

I know Im going to get into trouble over this one. Despite appearances sometimes, I take no delight in being the kid in the critical crowd who shouts that the emperor is stark bollock naked. But the almost universal praise heaped on this movie really leaves my gob truly smacked. Yes there is at least one superb scene: the dance in the doorway, which has now been played so often in the trailer and reviews it almost halts the narrative rather than progresses it. And You always hurt the one you love? Sorry Mr Cianfrance, thats not intimately ironic its clunkily clichéd. However this is a genuinely tender scene, beautifully played. If only, if only the relationship hinted at for these few brief moments had been developed or deepened one jot then we might give one when the pathology of a failed relationship that is the dramatic arc of this movie simply peters out in self indulgent hopelessness.

Yes the device of fracturing the timeline of this relationship, I hesitate to say love, works well: but replacing where are we going with how did we get here is neither new nor original, see Francois Ozons 5 x 2 to mention just one. The fundamental problem for me with Blue Valentine is not the narrative, or its technical treatment, or the often deeply committed playing: it is that the characters, their relationship and especially the social context in which it takes place, all suck.

It is the besetting vice of middle class writers and artists to sentimentalise working class people: sentimentalising the people distracts attention from the politics and their entrapment in social structures that institutionalise poverty and deprivation; almost obliterate aspiration. We are all prone to sentimentality: but working class people dont sentimentalise themselves, because they are working class; still less the social and political injustices of the working class communities within which the majority of good people struggle to raise children and live good lives, in spite of, not because of the higher incidence of crime, deprivation, poor education etc. Working class people need better schools, better rewards for what they contribute and political support and empowerment; not the passing attention generated by a so called gritty movie. As for the deeply offensive poverty chic of Slumdog Millionaire and exploitation of the kids within it, lets not go there.

Michelle Williams Cindy has choices: we know this because she struggles to study and become a nurse in the face of an overbearing father and an execrable taste in men. WOS (Waste Of Space) Bobby not only hits anything and anyone who doesnt do what he wants: he beats up Dean (Ryan Gosling) because he decides to stand by Cindy now pregnant with Bobbys child. Cianfrance leaves no emotional button unpushed: Deans mother cleared off when he very young leaving his musician father to raise him while earning a living as a janitor. Dean drives a fork lift truck at the beginning and throughout his time with Cindy. Even at the hospital where she works Cindy is propositioned by the doctor she works for who casually suggests setting her up in a local flat and playing away during the week returning to his wife and family at the weekends. Cindy just bleats, I thought you valued my work. As usual nowadays in Hollywood, men, all men, are WOSs.

Cindy and Deans relationship starts nowhere and goes nowhere. He appears incapable of offering anything but grudging acceptance of her aspiration to nurse and not to have a single ambition of his own other than hitting the sack and setting up a special treat tacky weekend of drunken sex in the future room of a local fantasy hotel. In the latter stages of the relationship he of course hits Cindy as well and we are invited to excuse this because of the intensity of his frustration at the gradual decline in the relationship.

This narrative is a toxic mixture of victimhood and sentimentality at a lost love that was never worth saving. Neither Cindy nor Dean make any coherent sense as characters yet their personalities are required to carry the whole emotional weight of the film. Cindys apparent empathy with her grandmother seems there just to make us sympathise with her. Deans warmth towards the child Frankie looks the same: Frankie hardly exists as a character and her interaction with Dean looks like a contrivance to elicit our sympathy for Dean.

Michelle Williams is a very distinctive and intuitive actress who one feels may well have an Oscar winning performance in her but this is so much not it. The social setting of this movie is phoney through and through: thank goodness the real Cindys and Deans out there do struggle to develop their lives and relationships despite the fact that many of the political realities they face are stacked against them. This relationship fails because it had nowhere to go: and it had nowhere to go because neither partner was trying to take it anywhere. Id be surprised if there was a wet eye in the house.

If you want to see a film of substance that portrays a working class community with an implacable truthfulness and authority then go see Debra Granik’s Winters Bone now on rerelease thanks to some surprising but very welcome and well deserved Oscar nominations especially Jennifer Lawrence in an extraordinary lead role performance. Unlike Blue Valentine, the characters in Winters Bone make complete sense: albeit a coherence that is gut wrenching and implacably, bleakly real. The circumstances in Winters Bone dont make us sympathetic or sentimental and Granik doesnt for one second throughout this superb little film invite us to feel either: they make us angry, incredulous, and convey an overwhelming sense of there but for the contingency of birth and the grace of God, go I. Respect for the people derives precisely from the truthfulness with which the social context of their lives is shown. The complete opposite of the artistic values that inform Blue Valentine.

Haven't seen this, Zettel. But am with you all the way on "Winter's Bone" and Jennifer Lawrence's performance. If she loses out to Portman then I'm not playing!