July 15. Based on the bestseller One Day, this movie shows one particular day of the year over a twenty-year period. Throughout the twenty years that pass, two friends, Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) continue their friendship. Their relationship is not at all romantic in the conventional sense. They do not fall love at first sight, nor do they feel that they are destined to be with each other. However, it is perhaps this realistic aspect of the movie that makes it so romantic.

   
 

Emma and Dexter meet on graduation day from their university. Their relationship is rocky at the very best from the start. Emma overacts on their first night and they decide to become friends. The two are hardly similar. Emma Morley comes from a working-class family and has to work while pursuing her dream of being a writer. Dexter, on the other hand, finds that life is handed to him on a plate. Their friendship and love of twenty years is captured in that one day––July 15.

Friends & Lovers

Personally speaking, this movie was about two friends, not two lovers. It was about two friends who loved each other but never became true lovers. The two characters do not always have the same feelings about each other. One outgrows the other, only to come stumbling back. Their relationship is shaky and walks a dangerous line between friends or something more. Lone Scherfig, the director of this movie, does a good job of capturing the delicate nature of the two main characters’ relationship. Although Anne Hathaway’s accent sometimes throws the audience off scent, both Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess do a terrific job of selling their friendship to the audience.

This theme is not new. In fact, the theme itself seems to be a trend in the current movie industry. Movies such as Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached all touched upon the popular theme of the ambiguous relationship between friendship and love. If there is a distinction between the movies mentioned above and One Day, it is that One Day deals with the theme in a more realistic manner. Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached follow a similar plot where two characters realize that their relationship is something more than friendship and fall in love. Emma and Dexter face a more treacherous process of discovering their feelings for each other. They sometimes find their feelings unreturned or their friend inaccessible.

July 15

This movie takes a unique approach on the time structure. While it follows a chronological order, it shows only one day of each year––July 15. This original time structure was directly taken from the book that the movie is based upon. This time structure allows for a very efficient use of time where readers can peek into the snippets of time over twenty years. This enables the author to provide a descriptive explanation of the situation while covering a broad span of twenty years.

While this was a creative approach in writing a literary work, there was less impact on the audience when this time structure was adapted to the film. Compared with literary works, films have already been more creative with their time structure. Twisted time structures are not uncommon for today’s film critics. If they had not shown the dates on the screen, people would not have even noticed that they were showing a day from each year.

Comparing One Day with 500 Days of Summer, we notice a clear distinction between what creative and uncreative is in terms of time structure. 500 Days of Summer used a frame where scenes jumped randomly within the 500 days that the two characters spend together. Arbitrarily jumping from a scene of a break up to a love scene in its prime, the director succeeds in presenting the audience with an unorthodox, but a very special, love story. In contrast, One Day failed to recreate the time frame that was one of the most special aspects of the book, ultimately leading to the movie’s time structure being no different from any other romance movies.

A Romantic Reality

Reality is not always as romantic as we hope it would be. We do not run into our love in the streets. Coincidences that are hardly seen in reality often happen on screen. While this sometimes leaves us dumbfounded, everybody admits this faint hint of destiny makes the relationship all the more romantic. Therefore, the common problem for all romance movie directors is deciding the line between reality and romance.

Scherfig chose to put a heavy balance on reality. No consequences or unreal factors lead the two characters to each other. Sometimes together and sometimes apart, they are in relationships with different people. However, it is this drastically realistic plot that makes a tint of romance so memorable and powerful. Scherfig managed to paint true love in realistic colors which is something to be praised upon.

It is not every day that we encounter a love story that we can relate to. While there are some limitations to Scherfig’s One Day in adapting the book’s creative time structure, he did succeed in making a romantic reality for the audience.

It is November, and it is a time of the year where we become very aware of how alone we are. Sometimes romance movies simply end up making us feel even more deprived of love and companionship, but this movie may be an exception. Posing questions about love and friendship, this may be the film that may help you over this year’s autumn.

Film Infomation
Release Date August 19, 2011 (in the U.S.)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Starring Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess and Patricia Clarckson
Duration 107 min.

 

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