It's been four days since I saw Blue Valentine and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, which probably means it's a good film. I'm not at all torn about its structure, which, for reasons I can't understand, seems to have confused some people. The film opens in the present day with Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), a troubled married couple with a young daughter, and for the next two hours frequently flashes back to their meeting and courtship. Gosling's hair acts as the most obvious time marker; either it's thinning, or it isn't. There's no difficulty whatsoever, then, in following the plot. So what am I unsure about?

Not the acting. Williams, playing a nurse who had wanted to be a doctor, has been praised, nominated, and awarded for her performance, and rightly so. Seeing her forcefully roused from sleep by her daughter Frankie, who's about five, and Dean, who sometimes acts like he's five, I didn't just sense her frustration — I felt it. But in other scenes, I found myself sympathizing with Dean instead. Cindy's libido has sailed, as has her respect for Dean, who is blissfully free of the broken dreams that hound her. Dean is utterly without ambition, spending his days painting houses and drinking beer, but that's because he's content being a father and husband.

Both Williams and Gosling are so compelling to watch, their roles so realistically written, that my allegiance flip-flopped throughout the movie — sometimes several times within one scene. I found myself cursing Cindy's bitterness one minute, then Dean's sloth the next. And this is why I struggled with the movie: As you watch the relationship implode, you can't help but keep a scorecard. Who's more to blame? Your own experiences with love, and perhaps your sex, might cause you to lean in one direction or the other, but the only correct answer is: both of them are to blame.

That's what makes Blue Valentine unique. We are not asked to take sides, and the film thwarts our attempts to do so. The film raises a number of issues, from unwanted pregnancy to the reversal of gender roles, but in the end it's a story about how the withering of love, just like its germination, requires the efforts of two people. That this is true doesn't make it any easier to accept. Same goes for the film itself — and, for that matter, one's own past.