Why One Day Is The Most Toxic Romance Of The Year

For much of the next 20 plot-jumping years, Dex is a self-concerned womanizer whose only discernible asset is his good looks, while Emma — no matter where life takes her — is his ever-doting cheerleader. It’s an almost entirely one-sided relationship. In fact, the closest thing to friendship Dex offers is some half-hearted but bad advice. When he is a trashy TV talk show host and she is a wallowing waitress at a London tex-mex restaurant, Emma laments her lack of professional momentum. So, Dex suggests she get a boyfriend. (Because that will give her life meaning?) But this is by no means a come on, as he soon clarifies, “someone like you…with the same glasses.” Cue the criminally unfunny stand-up comic/waiter with curly hair and huge specs of his own. Accepting what Dex deems her equal, she begins a long and lifeless relationship with her male doppelganger who lacks any kind of charm or ambition, while Dex dates a string of interchangeably glamorous and duplicitous blonds.

But eventually late bloomer Emma begins to mature, earning a graduate degree and becoming a teacher. Yet when she and Dex catch up over drinks, he, who is now a sleazy-looking cokehead and borderline has-been, mocks her for pursuing teaching instead of penning her oft-talked about first novel, snidely commenting, “Those who can’t do, teach.” Thankfully, Emma (with a straightened and sweet hairdo and a quirky but cute vintage dress) unleashes on him for his lack of support and general callousness. She has grown into a woman with a funky yet fun sense of style and a spine all her own! Shortly after literally and metaphorically walking away from a baffled Dex (how could she possibly resist his coked-up charms?), she dumps her comic beau and upgrades to ever-classier fashions. Emma is emerging to be the kind of ego-ideal and heroine a girl can and should aspire to!

Years later, she and Dex make amends, and finally become a real couple. But the circumstances are disconcerting. While at this point Dex has learned to care for another human being — namely his darling daughter, the cuddly little catalyst to his shotgun wedding — he is in all other ways a complete loser. At the point he and Emma finally begin a romance, he is a broken-down, rudderless and cuckolded divorcee with clumsy salt and pepper hair, ill-fitting clothes and a scruffy day-old beard. On the other hand, Emma is now living in Paris as a successful novelist, and has grown from chubby duckling to svelt swan, sporting a glamorous tailored pencil skirt, heels and fashionable blouse, with a darling pixie cut and a charmingly self-deprecating sense of humor. She is now the girl typically seen as the heroine in romances. Sleek and lovely, she is now worthy of love. But since her Romeo currently resembles a battered stray more than the golden god of Emma’s idolatry, this development is troubling — especially when Emma casts aside a ruggedly attractive French jazz musician in favor of a sulking Dex.

The visual disparity in their appearance alone is striking. (It’s like Beauty and the Sex Offender). But what it suggests about these characters status is even more shocking. To recap: when Emma was a frumpy loser with no career prospects, her romantic equal (according to Dex, the film’s ultimate protagonist) was a similarly stunted server with a hopeless goal. But now that Dex is the one who is lost, lonely and physically beat — he sees his romantic equal as wildly successful and enviably gorgeous Emma. This double standard asserts to impressionable audience members that girls should aspire to Lancome good looks to land even a once-handsome man. Then to add injury to insult, Emma’s life is abruptly cut short by a City of Angels-style plot twist. Now the movie is just about Dex and how he’ll cope with her death, which he does (in a word) abysmally. But after some gritty hysterics, Emma’s unfunny ex re-emerges with a pump yet plain wife (his apparent equal) to deliver to Dex his life lesson: “She made you decent and in return you made her so happy.”

Wait…Seriously?

So a beautiful young woman who wrote (presumably) inspirational books for girls is killed in a freak accident and the relevance of her life is reduced to her turning a vain, self-obsessed young man into a “decent” human being? This undermines Emma’s impressive transformation from doormat to self-empowered woman (most of which took place in Dex’s absence) by declaring it was only useful as a tool to snag Dex and inspire him to change. This suggests that a woman’s life goal should be to improve the man she loves, and if she has to become a model and bestselling author to garner that handsome waste of space’s attention, so be it! Ultimately, under its façade of sentimental romance, One Day utilizes the worst of rom-com conventions (the gorgeous career girl meets the sloppy manchild, a woman is not complete without love/marriage) and wraps them in a dulcet soundtrack that will make love-drunk teen girls swoon while taking these dehumanizing expectations to heart.

And while this message is damaging to girls, the one aimed at boys is equally demoralizing. Because if women are intended to make men better, the implication is that men are not capable of the kind of self-improvement Emma herself achieves. It’s a bleak worldview of co-dependence where men need women to improve them, and women need to improve themselves to deserve men’s notice and achieve their purpose. And so One Day becomes a tragedy of a different sort. Its message is backward and misogynistic, which is especially disappointing from a female director who so beautifully crafted the enchanting and poignant coming-of-age tale An Education. Based on the memoir of the early life of British journalist Lynne Barber, Scherfig’s film centered on a young Barber’s journey of self-discovery following an ill-fated May-December romance. It was understated and elegant and offered a flawed but inspirational heroine. Of course, there are shades of Lynne in Emma, but then the film’s final twist blatantly undercuts Emma’s existence and import.

Sadly, I expect One Day will do fine in theaters. And while teen girls idolize Dex and put pictures of Sturgess in their lockers, crushing on his dreamy hair and British accent, critics will likely give it a pass as they tend to for weepies starring non-pop stars. Because so little is expected of “chick flicks” and tearjerkers, I doubt anyone will acknowledge the dangerous message One Day lobs at its young and susceptible target audience. To proclaim that all our efforts of self-improvement are only valuable in so far as they may get us a guy is a thoroughly demoralizing message. Teen girls are already forced to face a barrage of marketing and magazines designed to make them feel unworthy. Should they really have to pay steep ticket prices to be so belittled?

This post originally appeared on The Film Stage. Republished with permission.

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