One day...

Hullo ma wee blog,

My Lovely G and I went to the cinema the other day. We went to see ‘One Day’, the film based on the book by David Nichols. We saw him at last year's Edinburgh Book Festival talking about this book which he had just completed and on the back of enjoying the evening we both read the book. I thought the book was really good. I thought the idea of using one repeating day the across some two decades to catalogue and tell the story of the relationship between a boy and a girl/ a man and a woman was a unique idea.

The book is partially set in Edinburgh, where the two main characters meet during the University time and then follows on elsewhere across the years and a relationship where they are emotionally never too far apart but never quite together in one of those familiar tales where teenage angst develops into adult confusion, longing and the fear of having let something incredible slip away as you settle for an uncomfortable friendship rather than risk losing someone you need and love.

It's always strange watching a film set somewhere so familiar, as the way a cinematographer will cut shots of individual places together can be confusing, almost annoying even, when you know the place so well yet watch characters stroll down a street, turn a corner and end up a couple of miles away, turned yet another corner and find themselves (in reality) back with they started. Of course that's not something that affects the majority of moviegoers, most of the time anyway.

One of the main benefits, having read the book, was that the film stayed very true to the structure, content and style of the book. This is probably due to the fact that Nichols himself wrote the adaption to screenplay which gave the whole a nice clarity and continuity with the book and especially the characters, which is unusual in a film of a book rather than the book of a film. I've often gone to see a film made from a book and been disappointed because the screen experience doesn't measure up to the imagination. While I love cinema, I also love what a good book can create in your imagination. The two aren't always compatible and lots of movies I've seen have left me feeling disappointed and sometimes cheated. I think that this continuity was really important in this film because the book is about character predominantly and the author's touch was retained in the screenplay. Despite that it's not a patch on the book.

This film isn't high art, it's entertainment. It's a decent story well told, well cast, filmed and produced but it's not going to win any Oscars. Anne Hathaway for example, right for the part as she may be, sometimes struggles to maintain an English accent. Despite this the film kept me engaged, entertained and just as importantly for my lovely G – awake. One difficulty is casting lead roles and expecting actors in their thirties to play an age range from 18 to 40. Belief is stretched just a little thin, particularly in the teenage years. It's been getting mixed reviews too.

I enjoyed it. But then again I did write in my blog profile that I'm becoming scarily fond of chick flicks but maybe it's an age thing!

I'd still recommend it.

See you later

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