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I am an English and Film major, cinephile, and aspiring writer! When I'm not buried in school work and lectures, I'm usually in the depths of streaming services and their plethora of film options. Or reading.
Imagine you are a very successful travel piece writer that gets to travel the world with your just as successful photographer husband. You get to explore new places, try new things, and fall in love just a little more with your high school sweetheart. Life’s great. But then your husband suddenly goes missing during a work trip and is presumed dead. After Grief wholly consumes you for a few years, you finally decide to give love a second chance to none other than your old high school best friend. This time, it feels like the Universe now has your back and you are ready to move on from your lost love. The two of you even get engaged and have a promising life planned ahead of you!
Then, during your engagement dinner party, you get a strange call from a mysterious number. You hesitantly answer the phone, and it’s your presumed-dead husband calling to tell you he’s alive. Now you are plagued with the inconvenience of having both a husband and a fiance—and not in the sexy reverse harem kind of way. Well, that is what Phillipa Soo’s (Hamilton, Amélie, The Broken Hearts Gallery) character, Emma Blair, has to deal with in the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel-to-film adaptation of her 2016 novel, One True Loves.
Directed by Andy Fickman (She’s the Man, The Game Plan, You Again, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2), the film version of One True Loves translates Emma’s odd and morose situation with Fickman’s comedic repertoire for the big screen. It’s different and it’s new, yet it harvests just enough interest to see exactly how the story handles a cinematic conversion. Like the novel, the film follows a flashback narrative style to showcase the vastly different relationships between Emma and Jesse Lerner (Luke Bracey), and Emma and Sam Lee (Simu Liu).
Minor spoilers ahead for those who have not read the source material.
Before: How To Fall in Love and Fall to Pieces
(Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves, page 7)
We are first introduced to the wildly novaturient lives of Emma and Jesse as they travel the world and blog their experiences together. They are young, carefree, and manage to go against the traditional grain of a modern nomad couple by getting married. Not to be confused with settling down with hypothetical kids, shackled to their small hometown, because they do not do that. It is not the life they imagined of each other, yet it is ironically what Emma ends up with when Jesse’s helicopter goes down crashing and he is presumed dead for years to come.
Emma and Sam: How to Put Yourself Back Together
(Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves, page 83)
Oh, sweet sweet Sam. Years after Jesse went missing, Emma and Sam reunite in the most small-town-romance way possible: bumping into each other at a music shop. Their rekindling blossoms into a much more beautiful, much more mature, relationship. Emma’s childhood best friend wants nothing but the best for his fiance and is humbly quiet about his own feelings and concerns. Rarely forward, Sam accepts Emma’s shock into her own personal emotional rollercoaster. Rather than getting in the way, he allows Emma to work things out on her own, with Jesse. He stays behind and, instead of talking things through directly with Emma, he decides to host impromptu therapeutic monologue sessions with his music students and colleagues.
After: How to Put Everything You Love at Risk
(Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves, page 135)
Emma and Jesse go away together on a mini-trip out to their family cabin. Jesse is in desperate need of some semblance of normalcy and is itching to erase the past few years and start right where they left off. Jesse believes they can slip back into the flow of their romance without missing a beat. Emma is conflicted because she undoubtedly loves Sam and she can not decide whether her love for Jesse remains past tense or at least nominally platonic. Three days are how long they have to spend together, to finally release all the tension (emotionally and physically) and open their hearts for what they are now and not what they were then.
Two True Loves: How to Make Peace with the Truth about Love
(Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves, page 301)
Through tough conversations about life-changing incidents, Emma and Jesse are able to hop back on their emotional groove and run parallel as they relate, in some sense, to each other’s traumas. The bottom line is that they are not young and in their twenties anymore. Emma grew up and grew away from Jesse. She found who she really was as a person through Sam, and it is the kind of person Jesse can not grasp her turning into.
The once spontaneous Emma now works at her family’s bookstore in the small town of Acton, Maine, engaged to be married to someone else. Jesse, seemingly not traumatized by his version of Cast Away, actually wants to continue chasing wanderlust. There is a clear thread of misunderstanding between the two ex-lovers, and Emma is truly at the edge of an identity crisis. Is she still the same old travel bug Jesse knows and loves? Is her small-town homebody self just a result of her grieving trauma? Does she actually want to settle down in Acton with Sam just because she feels safe there? What does she really want? Who does she really want?
Portrayals and Performances
There were some laughs, provided by Liu’s awkward and witty Sam (“Marcus, he’s not my brother husband,” “First of all, Dylan, it’s called a throuple”), that definitely eased some discomfort. What I also appreciated about the film, that the novel itself lacked, was Sam’s own perspective on the situation. Sam is this selfless character in the novel that genuinely has Emma’s best interest at heart, even if it’s at the cost of his own happiness. However, in the film, not only does Sam still check that box, but he is also rightfully frustrated. This adds a more realistic depth to his character.
While Bracey perfectly and aesthetically portrays the gruffly bearded Man Lost at Sea, and Liu embodies the shy and tentative music teacher fiance, Soo’s Emma gets thrust back and forth so often that we teeter on who we believe to be the “real” her. There was a struggle to explain who Emma was pre-Sam and post-Jesse. Emma and Sam have such a prominent and important history before Emma even started dating Jesse. This should have been showcased more in the film in order to evoke a much stronger emotional response from the audience.
Final Thoughts on One True Loves
I first read the beloved novel about a year ago; and after watching the film earlier this week, I noticed the darker and larger themes of heartbreak, grieving, and trauma got lost in the genre. I didn’t expect it to be categorized as a romantic comedy and felt as though its classification diluted the depressing emotional responses of the characters. However, it was still an enjoyable watch and consequentially created an entire beast separate from the novel’s version.
If the movie had been made with a drama lens, we would have gotten a more realistic and heart-wrenching approach to a story of loss. This is what the story is about at the root of it. Not only does Emma lose her husband, but she also loses herself in the process. She momentarily loses Sam and she loses a sense of normalcy during this confusing time. Additionally, Jesse lost Emma too. After spending years on his own, where all he had was time to think about getting back home to his wife, only to find out she doesn’t exactly exist anymore, is a trauma that gets weakened. This kind of struggle is difficult to portray with the pressure of a rom-com tag, and the film really relies on its star power and performances.
One True Loves is not necessarily for the book’s lovers. However, it is for lovers of cheesy romantic comedies with attractive star power and a not-too-cliche storyline. The chemistry between Soo and Bracey, as well as Soo and Liu, are relatively at the same level. It is enough to keep the audience wondering about how it will all end.
You can find out which of Emma’s one true loves she chooses this April 7th in theaters, on digital this April 14th, or on demand this April 28th.
If you want to understand the wider context of Jenkins Reid’s novel, then you can purchase a copy via Amazon!
I am an English and Film major, cinephile, and aspiring writer! When I'm not buried in school work and lectures, I'm usually in the depths of streaming services and their plethora of film options. Or reading.
This article was edited by John Tangalin.