McDowell: The One I Love (2014)

The One I Love is a concept film in the best possible way, unfolding a central conundrum that becomes more and more fascinating as we spend more time with it. It opens with a couple, Ethan and Sophie (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) in marriage counselling, although we only get a brief glimpse of their issues before their therapist (Ted Danson) recommends that they spend a weekend at his gorgeous country retreat, a site that’s apparently proved beneficial to his other clients. From the moment they arrive, however, it’s clear that something is amiss, and it’s not long before they realise that, while their regular relationship is playing out in the house proper, they’re only encountering their fantasies of each other in the guest house that’s set up at the other end of the swimming pool. This sci-fi quirk is never explained, but it doesn’t really need to be, since first time director Charlie McDowell does more than enough with the premise as it actually stands, as Ethan and Sophie move between the house and the guest house in turn, taking their turns with the rotating fantasies that have been guests in their relationship since their first incredible meet-cute, detailed in the prologue, which is something of a fantasy in itself. Experimenting with how malleable their fantasies of each other really are, as well as how much of their fantasy selves they can let into the relationship before they become jealous of them, or start to impersonate them, Ethan and Sophie’s burgeoning relationships wiith each other give the film an unusual and unsettling tone, suffusing it with the sense of curiosity and anticipation peculiar to horror movies, but setting that against a bright, sunny, even comic backdrop, since there’s something enjoyably absurd about their fantasies of each other, as with all fantasies. Eerie in the way that happy moments in fairy tales are eerie, their fantasies of each other intensify as they spend more time with them, regressing further and further from who they actually are, and further and further into their respective pasts, until fantasy and reality start to fuse into a dawning sense of dissonance, not unlike an ensemble country house drama in which there are only really two people. Yet that very process also rehabilitates the sense of romantic fantasy so precious to romantic comedy, albeit in the most unsettling and unnerving way, in a kind of litmus test of what it takes to make a romantic comedy now, an indication of how jaded and disillusioned we are with the fantasies that once sustained that genre, along with how desperate we might be to have them back.