The One I Love (2014), written by Justin Lader and directed by Charlie McDowell, brings something new to the table involving relationship dissection, and ironically echoes another movie I've recently written about in the I Just Saw
section, Coherence (2013). Both deal with characters in rocky relationships who are forced to make bold moves when confronted with themselves, in a quite literal sense.
Time passes and people change. But it is a complex move. Not everything about a person changes, or at the same pace, and that which you think has changed can sometimes hit you in the face with the truth that it hasn't changed in the slightest. Sometimes the memory of who we were years ago haunts us, in good ways and in bad. At some point we long for some aspect of ourselves lost, and at others we try to hide all memory or our former selves forever. But this is all written with only the subjective experience in mind. When you throw in the precarious balance of two people in a relationship, the reality of past and present become all the more dramatic, especially when the reality looks different to each half a couple.
The One I Love takes this dance to a new level and gives it a twist. After deciding to take a little holiday together to try and recapture the fire in their relationship, Sophie and Ethan, (played by Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass), literally become two pairs as each of them faces an exact copy of their lovers, but whom oddly seem to encompass most of the good and nearly none of the "flawed" aspects of each character. The result is a brutal reminder of the changes one goes through guided by the choices one makes along the way. When Sophie starts falling in love (back in love?) with Ethan's double, he becomes jealous of himself! It is a fascinating and inventive look at a relationship like I've never seen before.
The opening of the film views like a documentary, filled with subtle humorous lines so dry that they could almost make it past were it not for their honesty. The movie is filled with static shots that concern themselves only with capturing the moving present, but as this effect makes sense in the beginning, the effect moves the movie further and further into the surreal realm as the minutes go by. It is a smooth, clever transition, intersecting the point at which a million questions rise up in the viewer's mind about what the heck is happening in that house. The focus moves cleverly from a typical relationship drama to something more as the plot moves toward the supernatural, but this happens without ever losing the viewer to that supernatural aspect; by the time weird stuff starts to happen we are invested in the characters and rooting for their relationship.
When the couple first realize that somehow their doubles have been conjured, only appearing when the original is out of the room, they get freaked out and start to run away. It is Sophie's insistence that this little adventure could be just what they need to get their relationship back on track that convinces them to return and explore the phenomenon a bit further.
They come up with some ground rules before engaging in taking turns with their respective spouse's duplicate: They will not have sex with them, and they will be completely honest about their experiences. They agree. But things don't go exactly as planned.
The observations I made here and throughout the rest of the movie ranged from the very simple to incredibly involved. One of the most intriguing aspects of the characterizations is that neither of them looks at their duplicate as an impetus to become better people and recapture the positive things they may have lost over the years since the two first met. Instead, they each give in to jealousy and insecurity for which each of them dearly pays in their own ways. And I feel that it is this twist that puts the movie more along the line of romantic comedy and nothing more complicated. If the two were to dive in to the observation of themselves with more awareness perhaps the movie would have broached such thought-territory as expressed in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). As it stands, though, I enjoyed the movie very much and it is one of the most creative and clever story lines I've seen in a while. http://funkyforestfirstcontact.wordpress.com/
Time passes and people change. But it is a complex move. Not everything about a person changes, or at the same pace, and that which you think has changed can sometimes hit you in the face with the truth that it hasn't changed in the slightest. Sometimes the memory of who we were years ago haunts us, in good ways and in bad. At some point we long for some aspect of ourselves lost, and at others we try to hide all memory or our former selves forever. But this is all written with only the subjective experience in mind. When you throw in the precarious balance of two people in a relationship, the reality of past and present become all the more dramatic, especially when the reality looks different to each half a couple.
The One I Love takes this dance to a new level and gives it a twist. After deciding to take a little holiday together to try and recapture the fire in their relationship, Sophie and Ethan, (played by Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass), literally become two pairs as each of them faces an exact copy of their lovers, but whom oddly seem to encompass most of the good and nearly none of the "flawed" aspects of each character. The result is a brutal reminder of the changes one goes through guided by the choices one makes along the way. When Sophie starts falling in love (back in love?) with Ethan's double, he becomes jealous of himself! It is a fascinating and inventive look at a relationship like I've never seen before.
The opening of the film views like a documentary, filled with subtle humorous lines so dry that they could almost make it past were it not for their honesty. The movie is filled with static shots that concern themselves only with capturing the moving present, but as this effect makes sense in the beginning, the effect moves the movie further and further into the surreal realm as the minutes go by. It is a smooth, clever transition, intersecting the point at which a million questions rise up in the viewer's mind about what the heck is happening in that house. The focus moves cleverly from a typical relationship drama to something more as the plot moves toward the supernatural, but this happens without ever losing the viewer to that supernatural aspect; by the time weird stuff starts to happen we are invested in the characters and rooting for their relationship.
When the couple first realize that somehow their doubles have been conjured, only appearing when the original is out of the room, they get freaked out and start to run away. It is Sophie's insistence that this little adventure could be just what they need to get their relationship back on track that convinces them to return and explore the phenomenon a bit further.
They come up with some ground rules before engaging in taking turns with their respective spouse's duplicate: They will not have sex with them, and they will be completely honest about their experiences. They agree. But things don't go exactly as planned.
The observations I made here and throughout the rest of the movie ranged from the very simple to incredibly involved. One of the most intriguing aspects of the characterizations is that neither of them looks at their duplicate as an impetus to become better people and recapture the positive things they may have lost over the years since the two first met. Instead, they each give in to jealousy and insecurity for which each of them dearly pays in their own ways. And I feel that it is this twist that puts the movie more along the line of romantic comedy and nothing more complicated. If the two were to dive in to the observation of themselves with more awareness perhaps the movie would have broached such thought-territory as expressed in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). As it stands, though, I enjoyed the movie very much and it is one of the most creative and clever story lines I've seen in a while. http://funkyforestfirstcontact.wordpress.com/