A really rather dreary depiction of two young people from pretty dysfunctional backgrounds who get together - with her baby from another relationship - and struggle through life. Ryan Gosling is "Dean" a working class man quite content to make his way as a handy man/painter whilst "Cindy" (Michelle Williams) is a nurse who has (slightly) greater aspirations for both of them, and her little girl. The story is delivered in threads that try to reconcile their separate, rather depressing, routes to their current predicaments alongside their prevailing issues. Certainly there was love, once, in their relationship but that has long been supplanted by resentment, frustration and even some jealousy before it all culminates with a rather disastrous "romantic" night in an hotel. The relentless inevitability of the story is writ large from the start, and although the film is well put together, it cannot elevate it from the realms of a rather drab, angry melodrama.
