The One I Love (2014)

Film: The One I Love (2014)
Stars: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson
Director: Charlie McDowell
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

If there's been a theme in independent cinema this year, it may be that ambiguity rules the world.  Films ranging from Under the Skin to The One I Love to Enemy to Snowpiercer have embraced the idea that with plot, "less is more."  This has its misgivings, of course-sometimes when you see a film that relies heavily on your own interpretation, you end up having a movie that makes no sense or doesn't have enough grounding in fact to make up for its more artistic achievements.  I feel like this is the fight that everyone has with Terrence Malick-does he have enough message to warrant his series of feelings?  This is something that I wrestle with in particular as I love plot; inconsistencies within a plot drive me insane, and I hate when there's a departure from reality or someone's stupid actions in a situation exist just to create an easy plot point.  However, this doesn't mean that I'm averse to a film that pushes you into your intellectual deep end, and that's exactly what happened when I saw the delightfully-felt The One I Love.

(Spoiler Alert) The film is about Ethan (Duplass) and Sophie (Moss) who attend a weekend retreat upon the insistence of their therapist.  The couple has been going through a series of troubles since Ethan cheated on Sophie, and the two of them initially love the picturesque retreat, which includes a guest cottage.  Eventually Sophie and Ethan realize that within the guest cottage are doppelganger versions of themselves, but ones that will cater to their every whim.  Soon we find that the real Sophie and the Fake Ethan have started to develop feelings for each other, while the real Ethan is more focused on figuring out the magic of the guest cabin (something Sophie doesn't want ruined for her).  The film eventually sets up a high-stakes showdown between the two couples, where the fake couples reveal the mechanics of the guest cabin (they are a previous couple from the same therapist, waiting to take the place of the new couple in an endless loop of body swapping), and we are left with an ambiguous ending where the real Ethan doesn't know which wife he escaped with.

The film is a very ambitious first plot/script, and I'm excited to see where Charlie McDowell, the film's director, goes next in his career.  He smartly cast two strong leads who totally dominate these roles.  We've all become familiar with Elisabeth Moss as the unsung hero of Mad Men (though at this point doesn't everyone sort of acknowledge that she's the MVP?), but here we see a very different person than Peggy.  Moss doesn't play her character as the "right" one, and fully embraces the complicated nature of playing two versions of the same woman.  I loved the way that she finds ways to make her nagging seem realistic toward Ethan-this is a couple that you've seen every day of your life and not someone with a cookie cutter version of a "bad marriage."  Part of me almost wished they didn't throw in the cliche of Ethan cheating as the catalyst of their therapy (and a way to paint him unarguably in the wrong) as otherwise they could become easily interchangeable with any young couple watching the film.  Moss embraces this role wholly as the movie goes by-finding ways to justify her cheating with doppelganger Ethan, and finding the Stepford-esque version of Sophie without transforming her into an automaton.

The same can be said for Duplass (most well-known to audiences as Pete on The League and Brendan on The Mindy Project).  His Ethan is a man that clearly cannot tell when he is aggravating his wife and why his certain idiosyncrasies have driven a wedge much further into his marriage than the cheating.  It's alarming how different a hairstyle and a lack of glasses can make his appearance change (ala Rachel Leigh Cook), but Fake Ethan embraces his Manic Pixie Dream Guy-ness while staying true to real-life Ethan so it's believable that Sophie is falling in love with a guy that she feels like she knows.

The film probably could have gained a bit from drawing out the give-and-take between the doppelgangers and the "real" versions of themselves.  I am not saying that we needed to know the mechanics of the cabin (people who complain about that are the same people who didn't get the point of Lost), but more time spent with these people may have leaked a bit more of what was acting and who were the real people that were left behind from the last marriage retreat.  Still, this is a small complaint about a film that could have been a bad Twilight Zone plot (though, really, I love that show more than life itself so I don't know if that would have been that much of a letdown) and transformed it into a wonderfully acted duet, finding a creepiness in the most common of filmic tasks-falling in love.

Those are my thoughts on this film that was a massive hit at Sundance-what are yours?  Do you feel like there was enough clarity to keep this film easy-to-follow and not devolve into a bunch of Shyamalan-style twists?  Are you liking this transition to a more ambiguous independent film?  And where do you wan to see Elisabeth Moss, Mark Duplass, and what the hell, even Ted Danson go next in their careers?  The comments are there for the typing!