One Day

Director Lone Scherfig is an acclaimed contemporary film maker from Denmark with many meaningful and fine movies to her credit like Italian for Beginners, The Riot Club, Just Like Home, Red Road, Their Finest, Wilbur wants to kill himself - and the Oscar nominated An Education, amongst many others. Amongst these, An Education was nominated for 56 Awards in total across various famed awards and in all she managed to NET 25 out of them! That's an impressive HIT ratio when you look at it!

So when we decided to watch One Day which is from Lone Scherfig's stable, starring seasoned Anne Hathaway & Jim Sturgess to drive the lockdown blues away, we knew the rest of the evening will be engrossing. And it was and how! The movie is crafty and a nice theme of July 15 as a red-letter day for 2 decades! And it is a very fine adaptation of famed author David Nicholls without many deviations so the movie is true to the novel. That's kind of nice! The story is weaved around Dexter and Emma who are central to the plot and the goings on keep you engrossed and hooked and pinned to the plot!

The movie opens in the period of late 80s, from the college days of Emma & Dexter (Hathaway & Sturgess) and follows them for 2 decades and keeps you engrossed to one day which is 15th of July every year, year on year between these two characters. It goes through many metamorphoses right from the late 80s youthful, exuberant and rebellious life days to mellowed, matured and heading towards middle age days, It meanders through racy, charming days of youth and moves on to observant and relaxed days of maturity with consummate ease, deftly holding you to thrall without your knowledge! Anne manages to steal the show and be ahead of race the when compared to Sturgess in emoting and breathing life to her character with composure while Sturgess pulls off his Hugh Grantish role with ease too! Will they both finally unite together after nearly 2 decades and after their other relationships that keep going on - on the side is what the climax heads to. Saying anything more will be spoiler so lets avoid it. But do see it, the movie keeps you on the hook while Anne takes the line and sinker!!!

One Day Two eighties graduates in Edinburgh have an encounter on graduation day, July 15th ; the film follows their relationship by annual updates. Dexter (Jim Sturgess) brilliant, charismatic and a total narcissist and Emma (Ann Hathaway), a demure, warm sort are not a great match and both hitch up with others, but their friendship endures.

The film is romantic, but only to a point, and can hardly be described as a comedy; there is too much pain for that, despite some funny dialogue. It is a kind of growing older movie – early promise turning sour, bright young ambitious things tasting failure and settling for something less. The story is cleverly told and nicely shot, with good support from Ken Stott and Patricia Clarkson as Dexter's disapproving parents and Rhys Spall as Emma's husband. Jim Sturgess looks and acts uncannily like a younger Rupert Graves, who has portrayed a long line of charming handsome wastrels. Ann Hathaway might be from New York but she plays Emma perfectly – the dialect coaches really earned their money. Both of the principals manage to evoke our sympathy, though Sturgess has the harder job.

July 15 is St Swithin's day. On that day in 1415 the English Army led by Henry V (alias Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh) defeated a larger French force at Agincourt. This has absolutely nothing to do with the movie though Dexter and Emma do at one stage venture to Brittany, where they manage to lose their clothes in one of the film's more comedic moments.

I couldn't help feeling the story arc was rather predictable but I was absorbed nonetheless. At the end I'm not sure what the attraction was for Emma – she was smart enough to realise Dexter was a jerk but somehow she couldn't resist. He does get better – perhaps deep down she wanted to reform him. Or perhaps deep down she wanted to be a bit wild too. A film for generation Xers who are wondering what the hell happened to their youthful dreams and plans.

Based on David Nichols' bestseller, "One Day" is a more mature Nicholas Sparks version, but equally tearful and melodramatic. Based on a peculiar and intriguing narrative structure, which revisits the 15th of July in the lives of Dexter and Emma since 1988 over more than 20 years, the story focuses on the maturation of the relationship between its characters, fleeing the punctuality and immediacy that surrounds most novels. Ironically, this same artifice reveals the main weakness of the script - others will be seen in the following paragraphs - because the annual reunion with the characters does not hide the considerable loss of information that motivated sudden changes in the life and behavior of each one.

Sensitively directed by the Danish Lone Scherfig ("Education"), who delicately builds the fluid dynamic between Dexter and Emma (Hathaway), One Day is skillful in establishing the passage of time also with the aid of an impeccable make-up job - and notice how Sturgess, in particular, goes from a smooth-faced, jovial boy to a weary middle-aged man with wrinkles and bags under his eyes, while Hathaway emerges chubby (but not exaggeratedly so) after working two years as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant, which is an interesting detail. Benefiting from a competent cast that creates equally complex secondary characters that help compose the journey of the main couple (worth mentioning Rafe Spall, son of Timothy, who transforms the aspiring comedian Ian into a man that is simultaneously pathetic and moving), the film fails here and there by investing in stereotyped characterizations, but still avoiding that they dominate the narrative - and if Dexter's father appears as the typical "cold and critical father", Ken Stott manages to make him softer through occasional hesitations that point out his internal effort to try to get closer to the child.

Likewise, if Nicholls' dialogues are occasionally forced to appeal to exposition in order to clarify what happened to the characters in the previous year, this is balanced by the good construction of so many other lines (especially those spoken by Hathaway), which they display the cold irony typical of British humor (Emma at one point describes the restaurant where she works as a "graveyard of ambitions"). As if that were not enough, the script also creates really sensitive interactions between those people, highlighting the brief and beautiful scene between Dexter and his mother, who, played by Patricia Clarkson, shows melancholy and love when telling her son that, even certain that he will be a good man, realizes that he "isn't there yet".

The dialogues are a strong point of the script, also written by David Nicholls. They are fast, with intelligent insights and manage to perfectly translate the personality of each character and their relationships with each other. Even with silly jokes, like Dexter's mother in Paris saying to her son, "look over there, Alain Delon" ... or not, it's your father", demonstrating how much she is in love with her husband. There are funny scenes too, like when Dexter plays the most famous scene of Spartacus with the dolls for his daughter. But no character is better translated by the dialogues than Emma, the shy girl, but extremely intelligent and sagacious. Each of her lines is a bit of her temperament, feeling, spontaneity.

However, it is even in the construction of Dexter and Emma that "One Day" proves to be particularly efficient: while the boy quickly achieves professional success, the girl struggles for years trying to make her artistic aspirations viable - a situation that gradually reverses as that we perceive that the former lacks the intellectual, emotional and psychological content that sustains his career, while Emma, growing from suffering, reflection and the simple experience of life, gradually transforms herself into a mature woman and ready to overcome the obstacles that previously prevented it from moving forward (and Sturgess and Hathaway, talented and charismatic, confidently illustrate these changes).

The problem is that Hathaway's character quickly becomes the link with the audience. The dreamy sweetness, the sweetness and the detachment transform Emma into a very pleasant company, something that Dexter cannot see. Unsympathetic, self-centered and narcissistic, he uses Emma more as someone to quench the loneliness caused by her personality and assuage her pain and addictions than as a true friendship. Played by the expressionless Sturgess and his characteristic face of suffering, it is practically impossible to believe the beautiful and sensitive Emma fell in love with the guy after a disastrous dinner in which he exposes her (dis)interest. In this way, she emerges as the tragic anchor of the narrative, surrendering herself to the loves of a person she does not love, just to fill the sentimental need. What is revealed in the most cliché of sentences, enunciated according to the Nicholas Sparks booklet: "she made him decent; you made her happy".

As Emma and Dexter mature, the adolescent, dreamy and inconsequential traits give way to realistic, cynical and disillusioned versions, propelled by tragedies, some of them approached with excessive disregard and disengagement due to the narrative structure - yet another negative effect of this. Elevated to the status of protagonist, an incorrect and questionable decision, Dexter undergoes a wide dramatic arc from his mother's illness (Clarkson), the cancellation of the television program, his marriage to Sylvie (Romola Garai, the young woman from "Desire and Reparation" and increasingly better actress), to an event that would definitely humanize him. At times, Emma's life is described in terms of her dream of becoming a writer or her relationship with Ian (Rafe Spall), which is disappointing.

By scrutinizing and dissecting fractions of those characters' lives, certain moments should be more appropriately explored in David Nicholls' script. Dexter's firing after a botched interview and being hired on a video game show lacks a glimpse into the character's journey, though we understand what led to this precipitous fall. Similarly, Emma's relationship with Ian, presented at a dinner party without sparks or the guy's inability to make jokes, culminates in the explanation that she can't "take him watching Wrath of Khan every day anymore". This excessive exposition becomes constant in the film, requiring that a character needs to contextualize the events that are taking place to the public, which exposes the artificiality of the undertaking; well, if Emma and Dexter are such good friends, it was expected that he would reveal the bad news in the expected time and not months later.

On the other hand, the annual narrative is well explored by Danish director Lone Scherfig, and the use of raccords and ellipses in Barney Pilling's montage stands out. And not just temporality, but the duo of characters allows Benoît Delhomme's photography to individualize Emma's trajectory in a nostalgic sepia, while Dexter is bathed in a depressing bluish color palette. Finally, Rachel Portman's score avoids being too intrusive, competently punctuating the narrative. Yes, the idea is curious and the narrative exercise valid (albeit flawed). The trajectory of two people is drawn before our eyes and, let's face it, it's not something usual in novel production. It is a pity, therefore, that the chosen 15th of July sounds hopelessly clichéd and expositional, making the unknown 364 remaining days of each year seem more interesting by comparison.

We cannot, however, say that the film is not romantic. It has its moments, even if it prepares us to tears in such an obvious and brief way. Soon we will be in the next year, and the year after that, forgetting the pain and moving on. But that doesn't stop us from living in the moment. They are brief, it is true, but true and well-constructed. Especially in the final act, where we desperately want to go back to the beginning, as an attempt to remake the story, or at least fool our minds with that simple encounter in the middle of the street and a kiss seals the love story that should have been. Director Lone Scherfig managed to bring delicacy to the story of Emma and Dexter, making "One Day" a sensitive film. A love story built without resources common to films of this nature. Everything is almost realistic and fearful as life. She regrets that, when the situation picks up, she pulls the rug out from under us, with a cliché situation, announced, made just to make us cry. And she didn't even make it. Still, a good movie of its kind.

The story is good. The book is wonderful. Anna Hathaway is wonderful. But Dexter in the book is so handsome I do not even think this actor is attractive. In the tv serrie, Dexter is real Dexter, in the book Dexter is really attractive in this movie Dexter is not handsome at all for me.... and it is obvious it is in the USA not in the UK. Thos movie would be mocuh much better, but many choices are wrong except Anna Hathaway.. And the scenes with Dexter's mother and father could be more touchable.. It ruins a bit the story but the tv serrie I guess it is the best version of One Day.. If you read the book, you'll understan what I am talking about..

I went to see One Day last night, and though I had been looking forward to it for a while, I was surprised at how good it actually is.

The film has a very unique atmosphere, as it is much quirkier than your average romance. Also, without giving away the ending, I can say that it isn't as predictable as one might think. What I really liked about it was the complexity of the different human relationships that we are shown. The relationship between Emma and Dexter is by no means an easy one, nor is it one-sided. Given how different they are, there is a lot of conflict between them, although they do love each other. Similarly, what Dexter and his ex-wife feel for one another is never pure hatred, but there is a lot of understanding between them. As a consequence, the story seems like it could be taken from real life.

Plus, both Hathaway and Sturgess are as convincing as always, which makes this film absolutely worth seeing.