THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
“(…) for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
The One I Love is a peculiar romantic comedy. Think The Cabin in the Woods of marriage dramas. Also keep Solaris in mind.
The story is of Ethan (Mark Duplass, actor in The League, co-director of Cyrus) and Sophie (Mad Men’s extraordinaire Peggy Olson), a couple who’s in a marriage rut. The movie poster, both of them underwater, is explained right on the first minutes; it’s how they fell in love (it can also represent the rut, feeling of drowning). Decided to skip a party to swim at a strangers house. The excitement of it all; everything so new. And now, of course, the routine, the same old, the familiarity.
To start the new things off, they visit a therapist (played by the great comedy veteran Ted Danson) and he has a suggestion: try this retreat house, it will renew the love you have for each other. They go for it. And then, things get weird. Twilight Zone weird.
Sophie and Ethan discover the guest house is habituated by a different version of themselves. Of course, the whole thing has a lot of rules: you will only see the one from the opposite sex, you need to get in the house alone, yadda yadda. That is, on the beginning of the movie. Which leads to some very interesting and hilarious conversations early now. But later on things get batshit crazy.
Talks of cloning and other dimensions go on and off, but the metaphor here is simple: the “new” couple represent the better versions of them. Glassless Ethan is so caring, attentive, funny; same with new Sophie. That leads to the “original” couple to be their worst selves. Paranoid, needy, skeptical, cynical, over-dependent.
New Ethan tells an anecdote. You put a gorilla in a dark room for a period of time. He doesn’t know what the room looks like or what’s in it. Suddenly you turn on the lights. He can see now. He can’t understand electricity or why or how there are now lights. For him it’s a miracle. So the gorilla moves on and adapt. Why the NEED to understand? Why just not… deal with it?
Duplass and Moss are excellent as the only two actors in the movie — aside from Danson. Writer Justin Lader and director Charlie McDowell are both first timers, only having experienced with shorts before, but it doesn’t show — well, maybe on the last five minutes.
The One I Love is still a very interesting film, worth the check out
