Review

The One I Love

Ethan (Mark Duplass) spends a weekend at a strange yet idyllic retreat in an effort to save his fractured marriage in Charlie McDowell’s The One I Love.
Ethan (Mark Duplass) spends a weekend at a strange yet idyllic retreat in an effort to save his fractured marriage in Charlie McDowell’s The One I Love.

The One I Love is a tricky movie to review because there's a major plot twist that comes barely 15 minutes into the movie that we cannot talk about. So about the only thing we can say about the plot is that it involves a married couple, Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss), who are going through a rough patch in their relationship. (Adultery is apparently involved, but the specifics of the wound are never discussed.)

So they're seeing an unnamed therapist (Ted Danson, the stepfather of director Charlie McDowell) who, after administering a dubious keyboard-based test of their emotional harmony, prescribes a weekend together alone at an estate in the Ojai Mountains of Southern California, complete with a guest house -- where they might relax and reconnect with each other. "I've sent a lot of couples there," the love guru says, "and they've all come back" -- wait a beat -- "renewed."

The One I Love

87 Cast: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson

Director: Charlie McDowell

Rating: R, for language

Running time: 91 minutes

We might suggest that the therapist is being especially careful with his words here; and that you pay attention to the clothes that Ethan and Sophie wear in their early scenes with him. Apparently these scenes depict several sessions, although they are cut to feel like one. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But I will say that McDowell (the son of Arkansas native Mary Steenburgen and her former husband Malcolm McDowell) and screenwriter Justin Lauder have constructed a sparkling little bagatelle of a romantic mystery that owes more to Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling than the standard-issue Hollywood rom-com. It's not a brain-buster, but if you're one of those moviegoers who has been trained to expect movies to deliver pat and unambivalent answers in the final act, well, you might end up frustrated.

On the other hand, if you don't mind drifting along, enjoying the pleasures available in shrewd naturalistic performances (McDowell seems to have co-opted some of the same strategies that Duplass -- a filmmaker who has developed into a welcome, shambling screen presence -- employed in his so-called "mumblecore" films; much of the dialogue seems improvised) and can stand a little mystery, you might be charmed by this summer-weight essay on the roles we assume to play at romance.

There are things about this movie I can't answer. I think Moss is terrific, but I'm not sure why her character behaves in certain ways at certain times. But there's no way to discuss what I think is a hole in this gossamer plot without destroying it. So I'll just take my own advice and let it be.

Wait, one final clue: Who doesn't like bacon?

MovieStyle on 08/29/2014

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