I’m starting a campaign after seeing One Day. A campaign to persuade the film classification board to introduce a censorship classification of RO, as in, romantics only. One Day is a film which deserves an RO rating. The romantics amongst us will see it for the accomplished, funny and poignant tear jerker that it is. The rest, well, I can’t answer for you.

One Day is the new film by Lone Scherfig and starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe). Adapted from David Nicholls’ 2009 book of the same name it is the story of two friends, clearly in love, taken on the same day, St Swithin’s Day, for over 20 years. It is a will they, won’t they story of love, loss, longing, betrayal, bad timing and missed opportunities. It is film about the big issues of taking your opportunities, making the right decisions and not the easy ones and realising that mistakes are part of the long path of growing up. It’s a tale intimately told by looking at two very different people as they go from fresh eyed graduates to hardened 40 somethings. Ultimately, it’s a film about the love between Emma and Dexter. Within that love there is sadness, and boy, has this movie got the production cred to guarantee tears. David Nicholls wrote the powerful 2008 adaptation of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’, from which I am still recovering and Scherfig has the excellent 2009 coming of age tale ‘An Education’ behind her.
My difficulty with the film largely falls with Hathaway as Emma. Hathaway performs the role quite well (apart from the poor excuse for a Northern accent), has believable chemistry with Sturgess and she lends most of the films funniest lines. However, I can’t help but feel that she is miscast. Emma is a woman who doesn’t have the confidence to follow her dreams; she stuffs up her first night with Dex because she’s scared she’ll do something wrong, falls into a relationship with a man she doesn’t love because she doesn’t think she can get the one she does, spends years working in a tragic restaurant because she doesn’t have faith in her own talents. We are supposed to go on the journey with Emma as she comes of age, and grows into herself.Unfortunately, Hathaway lacks the vulnerability to allow you to really believe. Instead of understanding that she doesn’t think she can really become something, the viewer feels like the film is just killing time until she does. Hathaway is too womanly, too strong, dare I say, too American, to really make you believe. This would be fine except, when dealing with a ‘will they, won’t they’ film it hard to understand why they aren’t together when your female character seems to have the confidence to match her male counterpart’s flirtatiousness.
Sturgess himself is fantastic. You ride through his highs, but moreover, empathise through his many lows. The supporting cast are strong, if inconsequential, especially Rafe Spall (son of Timothy) in the role of Ian, Emma’s long suffering boyfriend. Finally, the excellent costuming and production supports the film amiably as it travels across the eighties, nineties and noughties.
Special note needs to go to Mr Sturgess’ make-up artist. I cannot recall a film in which a character has crossed a 20 year age span so believably and stayed incredibly handsome the entire time.
Ultimately, after a rocky start One Day settles into itself so that you become absorbed in the story, in the changing decades, in the charming scenery and in the enduring love of Dexter and Emma.