These stills taken by David Russo, the onset photographer for Blue Valentine, are so pretty. There are a whole host of photographs that were taken on set that act as an addition to the film and I just read an article about how the directors managed to incorporate a lot of them into the end credits (which still has the power to make me well up even though it's been well over a month since I actually watched the film). The story of the way they worked on them is really interesting too (Blue Valentine end credit sequence) and I think their final product is actually one of my favourite parts of the film, and works so well with the ending as a whole.
I thought Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling had really great chemistry in this film, it was completely believable that they were a young couple dangerously in love, and I read something recently that explains the authenticity of their intimacy; the director apparently had Williams and Gosling live in a small apartment 6 months before filming where they had to live on a budget similar to that of their characters and perform staged arguments. To build tension between the two actors, the director coerced Gosling into going into the bedroom the two actors shared and try to make love to Williams, a proposal she aggressively declined and he ended up sleeping on the couch that night. It's clear that the actors and directors got very into their roles and it shines through in the raw, gritty realism of the break up.
