The One I Love

Although the words are completely different, whenever I read the title The One I Love, I think of the final song from Grease.

You know. You’re The One That I Want. It bugs me so much that I try to sing the movie title to the same tune and it just falls apart so badly that I feel sad and wonder why would my brain betray me like that.

Either way, I went in knowing this was similar to a romantic comedy, but in no way like a romantic comedy. What a great description!

And it stars the guy from The League and the girl from Mad Men. No, the other girl.

Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are having marriage problems. Their love seems to have floundered. They used to feel great in each others company and spontaneous, but now they argue all the time and don’t know how to rekindle their relationship. Also, Ethan did cheat on her in a moment of weakness. That is important.

So now they are seeing a marriage counselor (Ted Danson), who recommends to them a weekend getaway in a house in the middle of nowhere that he knows about. He has told them it has helped many couples find their love again there and saved many marriages. It has a 100% success rate and is just a magical place.

When they get there, it is okay and they try to give it a shot. And then they have sex!

Or at least they think they do. Sophie says it was great but Mark says he doesn’t remember it. Whatever, it must be some dumb perverted joke of his, always messing around. Oh that Mark.

But the next morning, Mark goes to the guest house and sees Sophie making breakfast with bacon which she is totally against. This can’t be real. Especially when he goes back to the regular house and sees Sophie there as well.

Yep. Things are getting weird. Are clones involved? Evil spirits? Magic? Aliens? Voodoo? Why are they seeing replicas, damn it?! And how can multiple versions of your loved one help you love them more?

I am not talking about increasing the frequency of love here.

MOTHERFUCKING DOPPELGANGERS. This came out of no where! I just liked the somewhat uncomfortable artwork. But another movie to come out this year about Doppelgangers? We had Enemy and The Double? How many more can there fucking be? Doppelgangers of Doppelganger movies. If there are more, seriously, let me know so I can watch them.

This movie was full of surprises. It just seemed to keep getting weirder and creepier the more it went along. It had some great paranoia / jealousy going on, along with fantastic conversations about relationships. Given some sort of magical element, it adds philosophical talk too, in terms of what constitutes as cheating / lying when there exact duplicates running around.

I was very entranced watching this movie and loved every minute of it. Yes, even the parts pre-magic. They were interesting as well damn it. The best part of it is that despite these fantasy elements, it still felt incredibly realistic of its portrayal of real people in a really odd situation.

This movie was a complete surprise for me to watch and I am glad I did.