Review: The One I Love

The One I Love takes an oft-told scenario - a couple in crisis - and elevates it with a healthy dose of magical realism.

Ethan and Sophie (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) are in therapy, attempting to move on from his infidelity and recover the ease of their relationship. "Our happiness used to be so easy," Sophie muses at the start of the film, "and now [it's] something we have to recreate." Their therapist (Ted Danson) ushers them off to a weekend retreat in Ojai where they can "reset the reset button." Then things start to get peculiar...and we'll leave the particularities at that.

The twist that first-time screenwriter Justin Lader works in is not wholly original - flashes of The Twilight Zone and Charlie Kaufman easily spring to mind - but it is refreshing to see the rom-com taken down a different path. While we don't get their back story - Did they meet cute? What led him to have an affair? - we sense a history between them and that is due in no small part to Duplass and Moss.

Despite her celebrated tenure as Mad Men's Peggy Olsen and her excellent turn in Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, Moss is generally underrated - it may be that she's been so consistent that it's easy to take her for granted. Here she unleashes - in one stance playing the betrayed wife who insists on forgiveness on her own terms, then embodying a Stepford wife with a bubbly, ready-to-please charm.

In between, she conveys with deep conviction the questions the film raises: who is the one we love? Is it the person we first met, the one with whom we were besotted during that early blush of love. What about the one who's settled into the marriage, who's let the mask slip a little to show more of their true nature? Is it the one who falls somewhere in the middle? Or is it someone that is the person you want and expect them to be instead of the person they actually are?

Duplass more than matches Moss, using his mumblecore everyman persona to cunning effect. In many respects, he makes the twist's reveal - the nature of which raises questions not wholly related to the film's central theme - work, navigating the turn into darker, more ambiguous waters with aplomb.

The One I Love

Directed by: Charlie McDowell

Written by: Justin Lader

Starring: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson