Movie · 2011 · Drama, Romance · 1h 47m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 3.8/10 (588.2K ratings)
Twenty years. Two people.
Overview
A romantic comedy centered on Dexter and Emma, who first meet during their graduation in 1988 and proceed to keep in touch regularly. The film follows what they do on July 15 annually, usually doing something together.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.8/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.50/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 36%
Metacritic: 48
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Lone Scherfig
Production
Focus Features, Random House Films, Film4 Productions, Color Force, Universal Pictures
Cast
Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Tom Mison, Jodie Whittaker, Rafe Spall, Patricia Clarkson, Ken Stott, Romola Garai, Matt Berry, Toby Regbo, Matthew Beard, Georgia King, Heida Reed, Joséphine de la Baume, Amanda Fairbank-Hynes, Diana Kent, James Laurenson, Sébastien Dupuis, Sutara Gayle, Emilia Jones
Curator Review
Verdict
A bittersweet, time-lapse romance that starts as a breezy relationship chronicle and ends as a genuine tearjerker. It works best if you like emotionally messy, slightly frustrating characters and don’t mind a story that saves its biggest impact for the final stretch.
Best for
viewers who like romantic dramas with a melancholy payoff
fans of decade-spanning relationship stories
people who enjoy flawed, hard-to-pin-down leads
audiences looking for a cathartic cry
Skip if
you want a consistently charming or light rom-com
you get impatient with passive or self-sabotaging characters
you dislike stories built around delayed emotional payoff
you want a romance with a neat, uplifting ending
Overview
One Day is the kind of romance that spends most of its runtime pretending to be casual, then quietly devastates you when you least expect it. The annual check-ins give the film a strong emotional structure, letting us watch Dexter and Emma drift, collide, and miss each other across years of changing taste, status, and self-knowledge.
Worth noting
The movie’s appeal is less in perfect chemistry than in accumulated history. It can feel uneven, even exasperating, because both characters make frustrating choices and the script is often more interested in emotional weather than clean plotting. But that messiness is part of the point: this is a story about timing, regret, and the way love can be obvious only in hindsight.
Bottom line
Lone Scherfig keeps the tone soft and observational until the final stretch turns the whole thing into a gut punch. If you’re open to a romance that is more aching than swooning, and more about life passing than grand declarations, it lands hard.
Top Letterboxd reviews
sohni 🥀 (4.5★) · 8409 likes
i KNEW some fuckery was up when they got married and still had 20 mins of the movie left
Ellie ✨ (3★) · 4608 likes
me for 100 minutes: this is such bullshit they're such boring characters I don't care about anything that happens
me for the final 5 minutes: this is such bullshit wHY AM I CRYING
jcub (3★) · 3992 likes
anne hathaway’s hair had more ups and downs in this movie than their relationship