The One I Love-2014

Director Charlie McDowell

Starring Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss

Scott’s Review #221

Reviewed February 18, 2015

Grade: C+

Reminiscent of a modern-day Twilight Zone episode, The One I Love (2014) follows a young married couple (Ethan and Sophie), played by Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss, who seek help from a therapist (Ted Danson).

The therapist realizes the couple is out of sync and recommends a weekend away. The therapist has an excellent reputation for rekindling faltering marriages and turning them into successful ones.

He sends them to a sunny, beachfront house with a guest house, pool, and various trails along the water. It is simply a paradise.

I admire the screenplay’s creativity.

The couple meets their ideal, perfect versions of each other while basking at the vacation house. Ethan’s alter ego is suave, athletic, and sensitive to Sophie’s needs, while Sophie’s is sexy, flirtatious, and invested in Ethan’s life.

The real versions are bored, lazy, and a bit disheveled.

The flaws they once saw in each other are replaced with the perfect spouses. It is fantasy-like.

As one half of the couple slowly falls in love with the fantasy version, the other half grows jealous, and the film dives into a tale of who ends up with whom.

But is it a fantasy? Are the perfect versions real people or something reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

It is tough to know the film’s intentions.

A weakness I felt the film has is that it plods too much. At a brief ninety minutes, the film somehow has a sleepy, slow-moving undertone and could have easily been a short film or wrapped up within forty-five or fifty minutes.

I did not feel the chemistry between Duplass and Moss as strongly as I would have liked. Individually, they were fine actors, but the spark didn’t ignite for me.

I wish Ted Danson had a larger role. The young couple was the focal point, but the mystery surrounding paradise was never really explained, and Danson’s character could have been the key to the story.

Did he contrive the entire situation? Was it fantasy? His brief part left many plot holes unexplained.

The One I Love (2014) is a creative effort with an imaginative angle, but I wanted more clarity than I got.

The film is mysterious, yes, but also confusing, slightly dull, and uneven.

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: Best First Screenplay