1 ½ stars (out of four)
One Day, a new Will They/Won’t They/Of Course They Will romance directed by Lone Scherfig and starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, spans twenty years in the lives of its characters. Adapted by David Nicholls from his novel, the film begins on July 15, 1988, the day on which posh Brits Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Sturgess) are formally introduced following their college graduation. They nearly go to bed together but decide instead to just be good friends which makes One Day a sort of No Strings Attached or Friends With Benefits for audiences who prefer watching struggling artists to Ashton Kutcher.
The film checks back in with Emma and Dexter once a year on that same day – July 15 – and we follow their up-and-down, back-and-forth friendship that just might be the seed of a beautiful romance if they can ever get over themselves long enough to realize they are in a movie that demands they fall in love.
Emma is a shy, bookish girl who moves to London to become a poet and complains a year later that the city has “swallowed her up” when she is stuck waiting tables at a kitschy Tex-Mex restaurant. She both envies and resents (with equally strong levels of self-pity) the comparative success of her best friend and would-be lover, now a wealthy TV personality for a schlocky late night program. The film never adequately explains how Dexter gets such a cushy job, though he is quite charming in a sleazy way.
Jim Sturgess is just right for this type of character. His dashing looks (not to mention that accent, ladies!) give him a boy-next-door appeal that should be at odds with the character’s Casanova womanizing but somehow balance one another out in Sturgess’s sly smile. Anne Hathaway, a master of the shy, bookish girl (let’s not mention her accent, though!) is perfectly comfortable and oh-so-cute in her exasperated fits and dignified prudishness. The two are ideal romantic foils according to the opposites-always-attract logic of Movie Land.
Unfortunately, the script forces them to deliver a constant flow of exposition necessary to fill in the gaps between each July 15. Scene after scene the two young actors labor to spit out backstory in way that roughly resembles how people talk to one another. Occasionally, we learn that nothing interesting has happened since the previous year. At least once, a major plot point occurs during the in-between and is only casually alluded to despite its seemingly pivotal significance. Having such a crucial event happen off-screen would surely be the film’s biggest dramatic blunder were it not for the final twenty minutes, a contrived and predictable mess of an ending.
The problem is that One Day has nothing interesting to say about life and love; its observations about relationships are hackneyed and obvious. Time goes on, people change, life happens. And the film is just pretentious enough to believe these points can only be made through its tiresome structure. (It’s the same day – but different!) Last year’s Blue Valentine, an exceedingly better “love through the years” film, has similar things to say but understands how the nuances and complexities of human relationships shape our lives. By comparison, the characters in One Day are stiff, lifeless extensions of the plot.
Of course, Blue Valentine’s bitter take on love lost does not suit One Day’s sentimental aims. This is a hack job melodrama that places no trust in its audience to understand where emotional parts are. Strings doused in syrup accompany nearly every scene, overplaying the manufactured mush of the plot when it should be allowing its leads to actually, you know, fall in love.
As the film’s annual progression churns forward, helpful text pops up onscreen to announce what year we’re in, beginning in 1988 and only skipping a handful of years before arriving at July 15, 2011. (You remember, that long ago time of two months ago.) One Day also has an annoyingly persistent habit of depicting the 1990s and early twenty-first century with trite cultural markers. “I’ll never get a mobile phone,” Emma declares halfway through the film. A half dozen years later we see her with one of those hip Macbooks right around the time Dexter starts working for a trendy organic food company.
The worst of this occurs when, late in the film, Dexter reminds Emma that they once had feelings for each other. “That was in the late 80s!” she says to him, as if people actually perceive their lives in such rigid terms.
This moment is indicative of the film’s larger problems. One Day tries to build a tearjerker around its pseudo-wisdom about romance but misses the point of what a good weepie should be. We do not care whether or not Emma and Dexter get together, a death sentence for this type of movie. Instead of a love story we get two people talking at each other, explaining why they are or are not together. How romantic.
- Steve Avigliano, 8/29/11
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