'Blue Valentine,' Derek Cianfrance's emotional gunslinger of a film, tears into the topic of moribund marriages with an honesty that's hard to come by in Hollywood these days.

Divorce, and broken marriages, are all around us, but they're not frequently depicted on screen, or if they are, they're often depicted in ways that have very little to do with reality.

It took Cianfrance 12 years to bring 'Blue Valentine' to the screen after he first conceived it. He found Gosling and Williams early on, and they hung in there with him. The film finally premiered at Sundance 2010, then screened at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival before landing in theaters in December.

Katie Hafner Quotes