Dir. Lone Scherfig, US, 2011, 108 mins
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Rafe Spall
Review by Carol Allen
Adapted by David Nicholls from his successful novel of the same name, the One Day of the title is St Swithin’s Day, July 15th. As that day dawns in a beautifully filmed Edinburgh in 1988, just graduated students Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Sturgess) get together at the tail end of an all night student celebration, have a half hearted attempt at a sexual encounter and begin a friendship, which is to last a lifetime. The story is told on the next twenty or so St Swithin’s Days, when we see them, sometimes together, sometimes apart and discover what has been happening in their separate lives and what has been happening in their relationship with each other.
Emma is a down to earth Northern girl who dreams of being a writer, Dexter a bit of a dilettante from a well to do family. He travels the world, then lands a job in the nineties presenting the sort of crass television show which makes The Word look like high culture, while she moves to London and gets bogged down in a dead end job in a Mexican restaurant and a dead end relationship with wannabe stand up comedian Ian (Spall). Sometimes Emma and Dexter’s friendship teeters on the brink of destruction, but the link is never broken. And always, and this is not giving too much away, because this is at heart a romantic film, the underlying question is lurking – is this deep friendship the real love of both their lives?
The stuff of relationships is what Lone Scherfig does beautifully. As the only known female member of the Danish Dogme school, she made the delightful comedy Italian for Beginners, where, unlike other movies made under Dogme rules, where the camera didn’t fidget and you could see clearly what was happening on screen. After her first English language movie, the darkly quirky Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, came An Education, where Scherfig also demonstrated her understanding of how the times people live and grow up in shape who they are, just as the people shape the times. That is also an important element of One Day – as the characters move from youth to early middle age, we also observe the times they live through, shown physically through the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the telephones they use and the changing social attitudes of them and the people around them. This film gives Scherfig scope to not just examine a relationship at one point in the characters’ lives but how life changes us on the journey from youth to middle age.
Hathaway as Emma is good. It may seem perverse to cast an American in the role when there are so many British actresses who could have filled it equally well, but the film makers are to be acknowledged for managing to keep the setting in Britain and preserve the very British nature of the characters and story. And realistically with American backing for the movie, an American star is probably a requirement of the deal. The same might be said about Patricia Clarkson, who is moving in the small but important role of Dexter’s mother. Dexter himself, unlike Emma, is a not always appealing character. As his mother at one point observes and later in a different way so does Emma: “You’re going to be a fine man but right now, you’re not nice”, He is indeed selfish, vain, self obsessed and often shallow, but Sturgess always retains our sympathy, as we see him change and grow into a proper, caring grown up. The rest of the film is also impeccably cast – Spall shows another aspect of his versatility as the nerdy Ian, Romola Garai gives a good deal of depth to her role as Dexter’s wife and there’s a good cameo from Ken Stott as Dexter’s often disapproving but ultimately loving father.
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