This film made me weep like a 4 year old girl who just dropped her chocolate bar into a puddle. Mark Duplass has nailed it. He wrote it and got the brilliant Sarah Paulson to co star with him. And she delivers. Big time. Every once in a while, a movie comes along that rips your guts out. Derek Cianfrance's 'Blue Valentine' did this to me a few years back, and Blue Jay has done the same. The couples' relationship just feels so candid and exposed. It just got to me. It's not dis-similar to Richard Linklater's 'before' trilogy, although it's more of a neatly packaged powerpunch and it works. I just hope lots and lots of people get to see it.

I love it .. love is not complicated people are

For the most part a wonderfully acted and written drama. A narrative shift toward the end muted the experience for me but otherwise an impressive film.

Blue Jay hit me harder than I expected. I went in thinking it would be another quiet, black-and-white story whispered in your ear… but I ended up feeling too close to Jim. That guy who forces a smile, who remembers things that hurt more than he admits, who doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands when someone who once meant everything suddenly reappears. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to see yourself on a screen, but here I did. Too much. The film is strange in a beautiful way —simple on the surface, but deep without trying. Nothing big happens, no twists, no fireworks. It’s just two people talking, slipping back into a place they thought was buried, opening boxes they shouldn’t open. And that’s exactly why it works: tiny details, small gestures, awkward pauses, looks that hit harder than any line of dialogue. Sarah Paulson is incredible; she has that way of looking that quietly breaks you. And Duplass… damn, he hurts to watch. In the best possible way. There are scenes that seem like nothing, but they get under your skin. When they laugh like they’re still seventeen. When they stop, suddenly aware that they’re not those kids anymore. And when the real past shows up —the real one, not the pretty one— the film tightens its grip. It’s not cheap nostalgia; it’s that universal thing we all know too well: idealizing someone, or idealizing a version of yourself that you’ll never be again. And when reality shows up… it leaves you sitting there, not sure what to do with the feeling. The black and white fits perfectly. Not as an indie pose, but like that soft fog that hangs over memories that marked you. And the final Bill Callahan song… my god. That’s a direct punch to the chest. I don’t even know if it’s comforting or cruel, but it hits exactly where it should. Blue Jay is small, yes. But it’s also honest, fragile, clean, and painfully real. It left me with that strange knot between my throat and my stomach, thinking about everything that doesn’t come back, what could’ve been, and what won’t be. But also about what it means to have loved like that once.

I loved it. A simple film about nostalgia. A must see for 2016.