One Day

One Day (12A) 108 minutes – 2011

The release of One Day has been shrouded in sniping. Would Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have done a better job? Can a glamorous American play a retiring, English Rose? Does the emotion of the novel truly shine through? But these are minor quibbles and to snipe is to miss the point. This is an excellent adaptation of a marvellous book.

The film, based on the hugely successful eponymous novel by David Nicholls, tells the story of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) two Edinburgh students whose post-finals fling leads to an intertwining of souls. But neither soul is ready and the combination seems doomed; he is wealthy and confident, she poor and insecure. Over the next twenty years, on the same day each year, we catch up with their lives, what has worked, what has not. We see them together, holidaying in France and we see them apart, her as a waitress, he on TV. But through the ups and through the downs, we see what they miss; two people in love.

Hathaway and Sturgess work beautifully together, their chemistry almost palpable such is its strength. Her longing for him lies just under the surface, barely suppressed and ready to break; his passion for her rages equally strong but lies deeper and more hidden in spite of himself. While Hathaway’s transformation from ungainly student to sophisticated gamine is both compelling and persuasive, it is Sturgess who impresses. Superficial and hedonistic, he is despised by his father (resolutely played by Ken Stott), disowned by his mother (touchingly played by Patricia Clarkson) and even abandoned by his soul mate who tells him that she no longer “likes him”. But in spite of it all, Sturgess still keeps us close; we put up with the drugs and the booze and the girls; we accept that he is troubled and lost and alone; and we welcome him back as the man he once was as we sense his misgivings over whom he has become.

The transformation to the big screen of an episodic and flashback-driven novel is handled with no little skill by Danish Director Lone (An Education) Scherfig. One Day is not simply a love story with gags. It is the story of life; the dreams we start out with, our hearts full of hope; our successes, our failures, the aspirations we let slip; reality and self-awareness and the compromises we endure.

Outstanding adaptation. 9/10
DM
August 2011