Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams feature in the indie film Blue Valentine as a married couple whose relationship has deteriorated over time; once passionately in love, they now spend much of their time bickering, attempting to find out whether they can — or should — make their relationship work.

The movie was filmed on a hand-held camera by director Derek Cianfrance, giving it a wobbly, realistic look. He informed Williams and Gosling that he intended to split the filming into three sections. They would shoot all of the flashback scenes in which Gosling and Williams’ characters were still madly in love throughout the first act. They’d shoot the rest of the movie in the third act, in which the relationship takes a turn for the worst.

Cianfrance wanted Williams and Gosling, as well as the young actor who plays their daughter, to live in together during the second half, which lasted a month. Not only that, but they live in the same house as their movie characters.

For a month, the three of them shared an apartment. (But only during the day: Williams returned home to her daughter, Matilda, at night.)

“During the month, we tried to dismantle this thing that we had been building,” Gosling says to Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies. “[Originally,] we all worked really hard to create this love story portion, when they’re falling in love. We wanted it to feel genuine and real and true. And we spent all of this time building it up, and then we had to tear it down.”

Cianfrance instructed Williams and Gosling to take their characters’ wedding photographs, place them in a cart, cover them with kerosene, and set them on fire.

“We also celebrated fake Christmas and put up Christmas trees, and baked birthday cakes and bought birthday presents, and went to Sears,” Gosling adds. “We fought all day, and then we’d have to take [our characters’ daughter] Faith to the family fun park … whatever we could do to create real memories, so when it came time to shoot the [last] part of the film, we were drawing on real memories.”