Directed by Derek Cianfrance. Starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, Mike Vogel, John Doman 16 cert, lim release, 112 min

WHAT MOST often destroys love? Infidelity, physical violence, over-familiarity and fear of stagnation all play their part. But, more often that not, the trouble comes from – to quote Harold Macmillan on dangers to stable government – “Events, dear boy, events.” An accumulation of small astringencies eat away at a once solid structure. You left the gate open. You forgot to sweep the porch. Do you know what? I loathe you.

Such is the thesis of this powerful (if occasionally slightly meretricious) drama following the partial decay of a complex relationship. Oddly, there is something of Annie Hallin the film's structure. Starring Ryan Gosling as Dean, a handyman largely content with his lowered ambitions, and Cindy, a nurse with higher aspirations, Blue Valentineflits back and forth from the troubled present to a time when the couple were first falling in love. Like the Woody Allen picture, it even features the hero enjoying an excruciating meal with his partner's posh family.

There the similarities end.

Blue Valentinecontains harsh intelligence about the ways love can curdle. It makes still more troubling points about the impossibility of shaking off serious attachments. Once you're in, there may be no easy way out.

As the picture begins, Dean and Cindy, occupants of a flyblown house in Pennsylvania, are looking for their daughter’s dog. Following unrelated disputes over breakfast (the oatmeal wasn’t properly soaked) Cindy sets out in her car and eventually encounters the unfortunate beast on the roadside. The film continues in this merry vein.

Aware that their relationship is coming apart, the couple make the fateful (not to say fatal) decision to embark on a romantic weekend away in a tacky hotel. They fail to escape the present, but the audience is luckier. We flit back a few years to encounter Dean, a mover with a Brooklyn firm, romancing Cindy and, eventually, agreeing to act as the father of her unborn child by another (perfectly ghastly) man.

It is to director Derek Cianfrance’s great credit that, an enemy of the explicit, he allows hints at hidden complications to nudge tantalisingly above the surface. Cindy’s father, grumpily sane for most of the film, is shown in an isolated act of near lunatic violence. When she relates her sexual history to a nurse – while contemplating abortion – even the most broad-minded viewer will raise a wondering eyebrow.

Equally impressively, when the strains become apparent, Cianfrance, assisted by jagged, nuanced performances from his two leads, manages to encourage equal degrees of empathy for either partner, while clarifying just how irritating the other can be. We like Cindy, but, yes, she does seem faintly hopeless round the house. Dean’s a decent man, but his lack of ambition would drive any rational woman barmy.

One could point up the abundant indie clichés. The soundtrack by faux-folk hipsters Grizzly Bear is just a little too artfully distressed. The use of grainy footage for flashbacks comes right out of the American art-film handbook.

There is, however, nothing contrived about the central drama. It’s an awful tale that feels all the more ghastly for stinking of the truth. A terrific anti-romance.