I’ve already confessed in previous posts my crush on Jim Sturgess (dating to Across the Universe) and darned if I’m not liking Anne Hathaway more and more (she was really good in Becoming Jane and Love and Other Drugs).

Then, there’s director Lone Sherfig.  I have admired her work since Italian for Beginners – an exceptional film that’s part of the Dogma ’95 movement – and also loved An Education.

One Day is a romantic drama rather than the formulaic romantic comedy some viewers may expect.  In a way, it’s a bit experimental.

Instead of following a conventional narrative structure, the film unfolds in snippets, vignettes, and some fleshed out sequences featuring characters played by Sturgess and Hathaway, scenes captured each July 15^th over the course of 20 years or so.

Maybe this is not the best way to tell a story, certainly is it not the most efficient, but I find the film lovely.

Some moments are so true and the sense of time so authentic that there are parts of the film where I felt Sherfig and writer David Nicholls (screenplay adapted from his book) had looked inside my head and stolen some of my thoughts then revealed them on the screen.

One Day is uneven and messy and joyful and hard and affirming and all the other things we feel in life.  Nobody ever said living would be easy…or that it could be artfully encapsulated into a linear narrative of three acts.