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Blue Valentine is such a mannered, affected piece of filmmaking that in its early minutes, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive it. A prematurely aged Ryan Gosling, wearing an aggressively receding hairline — the character he’s playing appears to be 27 going on 62 — is roused from an armchair snooze by his young daughter, who informs him, with the kind of solemn urgency that kindergarteners pull off so well, that the family dog has gone missing. Gosling’s Daddy Dean, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, scoops the girl into his arms (her name is Frankie, and she’s played by a grave charmer named Faith Wladyka) and the two head out into the family’s scrubby yard on a search mission.

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REVIEW: Love Stinks — and Gosling and Williams Shine — in Blue Valentine