One Day

Release Date: 06 February 2012
Director: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson
Details: US / 107 mins (12A)
Based on the much loved novel by David Nicholls (who adapts his own book), An Education director Lone Scherfig is in charge of this innately complex tale of the development of a relationship over the course of a couple of decades. While a brave attempt at transferring the intense ambiguity of the book to the big screen, the film is ultimately dull, overlong, and full of unlikeable characters.


Hathaway and Sturgess are Emma and Dexter, two friends who we first meet on July 15th in 1988 as they graduate university together. They almost sleep with each other, but instead their possible one night stand develops into something that will span decades. As Dexter finds himself a famous TV presenter, Emma is a waitress but destined for bigger things; wherever they are in their lives they are never too far from each other. The film revisits them on the same date they first spoke, July 15th, every year, as they live, love, learn, and lose those closest to them.


Much has been made of Hathaway's schizophrenic accent, which veers from working class Northern English, to posh Southern within the space of conversations. But the actress is actually a good fit for the role of Emma, and you can picture her and Sturgess (the best thing about this) together. It's a shame the accent doesn't work, but ultimately that's the least of One Day's worries, as Nichols struggles to transfer his epic tale to a screenplay that does his core characters justice.


The main issue is the lack of development with the main duo, even though peripheral players are given little in the way of screentime - or worthwhile dialogue. The set-up is such that when each year passes, important things have gone on between Emma and Dexter that are merely mentioned; the trick for Nicholls was filling in those gaps with a couple of lines or knowing glances and that's too tough a task to pull off. It fails, not because we don't buy these two and what they go through, but because there's not enough of the good stuff.


Sturgess is a gifted actor and is excellent as Dexter; he pushes the ostensibly cocky, but subtlety layered personality without stretching himself and it's easy to buy the huge, gradual difference in age he goes through. But Dexter still comes off as a horrible guy, and it's hard to find what Emma sees in him, precisely because we don't see the good stuff. Also, the ending is borderline clichéd.


Boring, but well-acted, One Day is a noble attempt at adapting an ambitious story, but never really works the way it should.

Review by Mike Sheridan