Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson and Romola Garai
Directed By: Lone Scherfig
Written By: David Nichols
Produced By: Nina Jacobson
Distributor: Focus Features
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 108 minutes
Website: focusfeatures.com/one_day
Budget: N/A
Genre: Drama, Romance
Release Date: August 19, 2011
Movies by their nature have a hard time showing a complete relationship in the span of two hours, let alone a complete life. They, instead, focus on the milestones that we tend to use as punctuation – weddings, births, deaths. Our actual lives tend to happen in between, in undefined moments, day-to-day living that comprise the muscle and mortar of our everyday existence. A movie can rarely, if ever, encompass a life in full, its depth and breadth, though some of them seem to capture the length by going on forever. It’s something to be suspicious of. Movie love, no matter how desirable and grand, doesn’t much resemble the component parts that we experience in our real lives.
One Day, rather ambitiously, attempts to show a complete relationship and TWO lives that may not be complete, but certainly under a state of construction. On July 15, 1989, the night of their college graduation, studious would-be poet Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway, de-glammed and sporting an only-occasionally spotty English accent) has an unexpected hook-up with her college’s local lothario Dexter (Jim Sturgess from Across the Universe). Emma is sly, smart, and cynical; she’d rather be playing Scrabble than going clubbing (my kind of gal). Conversely, Dexter comes from money and posh English surroundings, preferring hedonism and trading on his good looks and fine breeding. The two strike up an unexpected sort-of relationship that blossoms into an enduring friendship even as they part.
One Day then follows Emma and Dexter across the years of their lives, but only on that single day – July 15 – for the next 20 years. The movie gives us snapshots of where the two are in their lives, sometimes together, sometimes apart, on that same date from year to year. We see Emma struggle with the realities of the post-graduate work force and develop a relationship with Ian (Rafe Spall), an earnest, would-be stand-up comedian (“I’m working on this bit about the differences between men and women.”). Dexter goes from global gallivanting to life as an obnoxious English television host before ending the ‘90s as a burnt-out has-been in the Corey Feldman mode, much to the dismay of his mother (Patricia Clarkson). Through the decades that ensue and right through to the present, Dexter and Emma maintain an often tenuous friendship that occasionally looks like love.
Like all romantic dramas, there’s certainly an element of Hollywood to the proceedings, as the two pretty people who can’t seem to find love attain various levels of fame and fulfillment through the course of their lives The “single day” gimmick does cheat a little bit – it’s a little remarkable how many significant life events happen to Emma and Dexter in mid-July – but as a whole does a good job of underlining the artificiality of the standard movie romance and deflates the notion that the truncated, heavily edited version of relationships we see on film are a proper representation of what constitutes love. Director Lone Scherfig, who won acclaim for 2009’s An Education, plays the time difference subtly, using period-appropriate music (dig the Tracy Chapman) and some of the more unfortunate style trends of the ‘80s and ‘90s to show the passage of time, though this wears a bit thin when over-40 Emma looks like Anne Hathaway with less makeup.
A game-changing plot twist late in the film aims to hit audiences with the impact of a truck, but the fact that it’s telegraphed is beside the point by the time we get to that day many years later in their lives. One Day is about the journey, not the destination, and that journey looks a bit like a twee, more English version of When Harry Met Sally… One Day often stumbles with its ambitions, its fractious structure robbing it of much momentum, but a receptive audience should appreciate its lack of the more shrill qualities of modern movie romance. It’s a movie that offers few of the easy platitudes and tidy endings we’ve gotten used to as cynical moviegoers. Much like life, One Day is never quite satisfying enough, but there’s a lot of good in there that resonates and makes the awkward bits worthwhile.
2.5 Stars
