One Day is about a girl who can’t help but shake her love for the boy she almost had sex with on the night of her college graduation. This, despite the fact that over the course of 18 years they hardly grow closer and in the process he becomes a self-absorbed, womanizing drug addict and alcoholic who never appreciates her as anything more than a shoulder to cry on when he’s feeling low. Essentially, he uses her.
With that, I could end this review right now and be done with it, feeling as if I’ve told you enough to get you to stay away, but there is more to loathe that must be pointed out if we are to hope films like this stop being made.
Based on David Nicholls’ bestselling novel, One Day is told in year-by-year installments, giving us a look in on the lives of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) each July 15, beginning in 1988 and ending in 2006. The film begins with a brief look at Emma on July 15, 2006 in an opening as foretelling as one can get and one that had me cringing from the outset.
About midway through I was thankful for that opening scene. I had written down “2006” on my notepad and it became a goal for the film to finally reach its end point. As the years ticked by I kept hoping for each July 15 to be shorter than the last, leading to that moment when it read “2006” and I breathed a sigh of relief as the inevitable came to pass and the end was in sight.
Over the course of these 18 years we watch as two people with absolutely no chemistry grow apart, but somehow continue to come back together despite drugs, alcohol, cancer, relationships, marriage, children, adultery and divorce. Obviously, each of these items is included in an attempt to drag you into the story emotionally because actual substance is lacking.
The worst offense this film makes is the one I mention in the opening paragraph. Outside of the fact Hathaway and Sturgess have absolutely zero chemistry with one another, Emma, as a person, is a character you want to beat over the head with a common sense stick. Emma is a talented writer-to-be, though her inability to leave Dexter behind, despite having virtually zero reason to keep him, is baffling. She allows him to destroy her life on a continual basis, and it would be much easier to understand if there was even the slightest spark between the two. Instead, she only becomes a necessity in Dexter’s life once the need to have her there is all that’s left for him. Yeah, really romantic. Quite the charmer.
Maybe I would have been more inclined to let the film’s finale not bother me so much had there been something along the way to keep hold of, but I didn’t like or respect either of these characters to ever care how their lives turned out.
Lone Scherfig made a giant splash on the worldwide scene with An Education in 2009. She’d been directing films and television shows for 24 years up to that point, but she had finally broken out on a grand level. I enjoyed that film so much my anticipation for what she could deliver next increased greatly, and to ultimately be offered a soulless mess of a romance is entirely disappointing.
I have not read David Nicholls’ book, but considering he adapted his own novel for the screen I would tend to think his original vision remains. For this reason alone I’m confused as to how the book could be such a big hit and the film such a big mess. Books do allow for a reader to enter parts of a character’s soul a film typically cannot, but actors have other ways of letting audiences in, such as their eyes, expressions and general demeanor. As far as Sturgess and Hathaway are concerned, they didn’t stand much of a chance.
Each opportunity the two actors get to establish a relationship built on friendship and respect, or even one of those physical tricks I just mentioned, is lost in one of the film’s cliched romantic or emotionally damaging strings or moments meant for comedy such as when Dexter’s clothes are stolen while skinny dipping or when he whacks his fiance in the face during some strange blindfold parlour game.
Moments of true humanity are never on display as each passing scene only searches for reasons as to why we’re visiting these two characters each July 15th rather than giving us any real insight as to who they are and what they’re feeling inside. As a result we have a pair of empty shells with surface-level significance. I’d say I wish I’d never met them, but then again I can’t say I feel as if I ever did.
