I actually saw these three films a couple of weeks ago all within several days, and that proximity probably led me to think about them as a group linked by a common exploration of particular marriages.

Each of the films appeals to me, though I find Rabbit Hole the strongest overall, but only Another Year presents a marriage with the tenderness, affection, and persistent respect between the partners that makes me a little wistful.  Despite my fondness for Mike Leigh’s films, however, this is the weakest film of the lot.

Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville play Jim and Mary, a happily married couple surrounded by friends who are falling apart – sometimes sloppily and miserably – while Jim and Mary move placidly and kindly through the wreckage.  Another Year doesn’t rise to the level of some of Leigh’s other films (Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake spring to mind), but this writer/director is worth watching for his expert way with actors.

If Jim and Mary are the happiest couple of this lot of films, Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) are at the other end of the spectrum.  I love the look of Derek Cianfrance’s narrative that alternately chronicles the beginning and the end of this relationship.

I quibble with one narrative element that takes Blue Valentine off-kilter for me emotionally (the character arc of Cindy’s father, played by John Doman), but otherwise the motivations feel true, and this gritty look at unfulfilled expectations in working class America makes me feel as tired and used up as the couple onscreen.  I don’t want to live in this zone when I go to the movies, but visiting it can be instructive.

Finally, there is Rabbit Hole, a fine film exploring the grief of a husband and wife who have lost a child.  Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart, Becca and Howie, approach their mutual loss differently and separately but not without love for one another.  The central question of the film is whether or not they can find a way back to common ground.

John Cameron Mitchell does not strike a false note in this intimate portrait of despair, a film suggesting, ultimately, that perhaps sometimes love is enough to sustain survival. This is a taut (91 minutes) and fascinating film that is nuanced and complex but not contrived.  (I liked Mitchell’s earlier – also challenging – film Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)

The beauty of a blog is that it is dynamic rather than static.  I think I’m going to revise my list of favorite movies of 2010 and put Rabbit Hole on it.  Lately, I’ve returned (mentally) to I Am Love also and keep running certain sequences through my mind.  I think my list is headed for reissue.  Stay tuned…