Somehow I didn’t cry
ONE DAY
Director: Lone Scherfig
Running time: 108 minutes
Cert. 12A
They say that the best-selling book by David Nicholls is a three-tissue weepie.
I regret that I have not read the book, but at least I had no expectations of the film. It rather bizarrely and controversially cast the American actress Anne Hathaway as the heroine, Emma Morley, who is supposed (I think) to come from Yorkshire. This was really hard to discern by the accent, whose vowels wobbled around the counties. That aside, the hair, make-up and wardrobe people did a terrific job of making Ms. Hathaway look plain and gawky as a 1988 graduate wearing the mandatory Doc Martens and then transforming her year on year into a stunning and confident mature woman.
For that is the intriguing style of the storytelling: it shows us the protagonists on one day, July 15, for about 20 years from their graduation. The other main character is Dexter (Jim Sturgess), a rich, spoilt, hedonistic bounder, who displays all that was worst about the 90s. Rather incredibly, but necessarily for the plot, Emma hangs in with Dexter all the way to his inevitable crash and beyond. She loves him even when she doesn’t like him. There is certainly little to like. Meanwhile, Emma makes her own kind of blunders accompanied by the annoying but endearing Ian, the failed stand-up comic.
Contemporary ugliness
It is an interesting yarn, which charts some of the ugly, blind alleys of contemporary life lived without any kind of moral or spiritual compass. These are bright young people. But their main driving force is the sexual urge. Sexual references permeate the film. There is the usual portrayal of the automatic expectation of sexual intercourse on the briefest acquaintance. But the film is also honest about the chaos, disillusionment and emptiness which ensue. The characters hunger for something more. Eventually they discover that friendship is a better basis for a relationship than sex. But they take a long time working that one out. The only guiding lights in the film are Ian’s love for Emma and Emma’s love for Dexter. Ian’s tribute to Dexter at the end of the film is his rueful acknowledgement that she made him a decent person. That is the power of love and grace.
It seems that reviewers who have read the book are disappointed with the film. But the film is, in its own right, both enjoyable and thought-provoking. What it was not, for me, was a weepie. And I say this as a woman who cries at anything from The Waltons to Scott of the Antarctic. This missing element may be due to the main performances or the characterisation or both. What was lacking was a depth of emotional engagement. The most moving moment of the film for me was a brief shot towards the end of Ian with his family. It is a cliché about characters making a journey, but his character did and, probably due to the exquisite acting of Rafe Spall, it was convincing and poignant.
