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| Moss and Duplass play doubles in The One I Love. |
««1/2 The One
I Love. Written by Justin Lader.
Directed by Charlie McDowell . At selected theaters.
It’s been fifteen years since Spike Jonze and Charlie
Kaufman unleashed Being John Malkovich on
an unsuspecting world. While other films (including Kaufman's own Synecdoche, New York) have come close, Malkovich remains the benchmark for a
kind of loopy cerebrality, for conjuring not just unsolvable puzzles but a
universe where that futility doesn’t really matter. In short, though highly
self-aware, it also felt fresh—no easy trick.
Newcomers Justin Lader and Charlie
McDowell almost certainly had Malkovich
in mind—along with a few Twilight Zone
episodes—when they made their head-scratcher, The One I Love. If a label helps explain it, it might be called a
“rom-con”, with “con” being short for “conundrum”.
Lader’s script concerns Ethan and
Sophie (Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss), a couple giving their fraying
relationship a last chance. At the
prompting of their therapist (Ted Danson), they retire to a certain vacation
home from which many couples have come back “renewed”. It turns out to be a nice spot indeed, but
more populated than Ethan and Sophie expected: already in residence are another
Ethan and another Sophie, each a slightly cooler, slightly sweeter version of
their real counterparts. Though inexplicable
(and, in fact, never really explained), their idealized versions naturally have
a profound appeal. Ethan ultimately gets so jealous of his doppelganger that he
stalks his wife, hoping and dreading to catch her in the act with…himself.
No question it’s a striking premise,
exploited well as Lader and McDowell proceed to bid up the stakes. They’re also
spot-on in their dark appraisal of human nature, which tends to be more
bothered by what is being lost than what might possibly be gained. Duplass is
fine, but the slyly seductive Moss (Peggy in Mad Men) continues to show why, with her air of a character actor
suddenly pushed into the lead, she’s one of the more intriguing leading ladies
emerging now.
The problem with The One I Love goes back to what Malkovich did especially well—feeling fresh while also being a kind
of “meta-story” about people trapped in a story. All too often Duplass delivers
lines that start with “I know it sounds weird, but…”, or “I know we’re having a
really weird weekend, but…” By the time he calls his situation “some real Twilight Zone shit,” we’re already kind
of tired of Ethan’s (and the filmmakers’) whiny yearning to exist both on the
screen and out in the audience, eating popcorn with us.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with characters that
are self-aware of their predicament as characters, or—for that matter—with
stories that pose questions never meant to be solved. As long as we get
something else, such as laughs, it’s all good. Smart as it is, The One I Love simply lacks enough of
that “something else” to earn our love.
© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro
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