Overview
On the brink of separation, Ethan and Sophie escape to a beautiful vacation house for a weekend getaway in an attempt to save their marriage. What begins as a romantic and fun retreat soon becomes surreal, when an unexpected discovery forces the two to examine themselves, their relationship, and their future.
The One I Love is billed as a ‘comedy’. But I think the real problem this directorial debut of Charlie McDowell (son of) has is that it isn’t quite sure what it is trying to be.
This is a movie definitely best watched with as little knowledge of the plot as possible, so I won’t explain much more than this: A couple is undergoing marriage counselling, and their counsellor sends them off to a private retreat that will work wonders.
And a wondrous experience it certainly will turn out to be, at least initially. As the main characters, and the audience, find out more about their surroundings, the movie moves from relationship drama to quirkie comedy to psychological drama to almost sci-fi thriller territory (well more Twilight Zone territory). But in doing so it sort leaves you feeling short-changed on any of those.
I can see in the end how they came to classify it as a comedy. But it lacks focus on picking its true genre to succeed; and if you’d want to defy all genre classifications, you’d have to come up with something a lot stronger than this…
