One Day (*½)
Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson, Romola
Garai, Rafe Spall, Ken Stott
Seen: September 30th 2011
*½
Out of ****
The tag line for One Day is “Twenty Years. Two People.” This is an
unwitting prelude of what’s to come – a movie that comes very close to feeling
like twenty years, even though it’s title attempts a different claim. Dexter
Mayhew (Sturgess) and Emma Morley (Hathaway) end up in Emma’s apartment after
graduation from the University of Edinburgh on 15 July 1988, but they do not
sleep together after some awkward moments (Dexter trying to sneak out and Emma
confessing to not being good at this kind of thing). They start an unlikely
friendship, revisited every year on the 15th of July for the rest of
the movie, for 20 years.
Emma starts out awkward and dressed in awfully 80’s-inspired fashion
(Dr. Martin’s with a flowery dress) for about the first five years (if not
longer, and that’s when she’s not in her work uniform, an even uglier Tex-Mex
restaurant outfit), and Dexter is a ladies’ man bad boy for most of the 20
years with a very unconvincing I-can’t-care-less-about-anything sneer on his
face (if the clock strikes 12 your face will stay like that!). Emma delays her
own dreams of becoming a writer because of a lack of self-confidence, and
Dexter becomes a successful, if somewhat scrappy, TV presenter –the vacuous
late night show variety. Every year the two either meet up or spend time on the
phone wishing they could meet up, and the relationship goes through ups and
downs (more downs than ups, thanks to Dexter’s selfish lifestyle) that become
tedious after at most 30 minutes. Along the line Dexter has to deal with his
mother’s (Clarkson) cancer and subsequent death, his fractured relationship
with his father (Stott), and marriage and divorce to Sylvie (Garai). Emma
cruises through life without taking much for herself, ending up in a senseless
but possibly (and only initially) convenient relationship with failing comedian
Ian (Spall), who is a secondary character in her life even though Dexter is far
away and emotionally unavailable.
The redemption of Dexter happens far too late and by this time the
viewer cannot fathom anyone giving this man another chance after so many years
of being what he was – which must be a testament to the enduring power of love
(be it unrequited or not). And the big surprise approximately 4 seconds after
this redemption is so sudden and jarring that viewers can now simply give up on
trying to live themselves into the story, which, if you’ve lasted this long, I
commend you for. Anna Hathaway, as always, is good, but I believe the material she’s
given doesn’t give her much chance to shine. Jim Sturgess on the other hand is
surprisingly awful with his out-of-place sneer and bad-boy sensibility. All the
other actors are merely plot-points and, apart from a few sweet scene-stealers from
Patricia Clarkson, cannot be mentioned for anything other than showing up.
There is an increasing strangeness in which movies make it to the big
screen circuit and which do not in South Africa, with movies like Zach
Galifianakis’ It’s Kind of a Funny Story
(which I’ve not seen but really want to) being released straight to DVD, while
movies like One Day bafflingly gets a
big screen release. Why? Who makes these decisions, and do they even watch the
movies? One Day does not deserve a big screen release, as it offers nothing that
viewers go to the movies for. Nothing.
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