It’s a kind of Harry meets Sally plus Before sunrise.
The story is simple: Emma and Dexter graduate from the same college but he never really noticed her. She had a crush on him, and on July 15 they ‘almost’ sleep together. He was drunk and somehow it didn’t work out and they simply fell asleep together, deciding to be friends. He tells her something about the date, July the 15th, and we are shown one day in their life for each following year, to see how they’re doing. They kept seeing each other as friends, then he went abroad to find his way; they spent a week-end together but it was clear that she wanted a relationship while he only wanted to have fun, so they again went their separate ways. He had lots and lots of lovers, drank more and more , became a tv presenter for a kid-show. Meanwhile she worked as a waitress and eventually started dating wanna-be-comedian Ian that she didn’t really love.
She becomes a teacher and enjoys it, but when they meet again he appears to be on drugs, and even insults her saying that she teaches because she couldn’t become a writer, ‘those who can, do, those who can’t, teach’ which is a jerk’s saying of course, and she leaves. She yells at him, then she tells him that they clearly want different things from life, and that although she loves him very much she simply doesn’t like him anymore, what he has become.
Emma and Ian break up, but he encourages her to publish the book she wrote, telling her it’s really good. She doesn’t see Dexter for a while, and he meets Silvi and they get engaged, until they meet again at her old roommate’s wedding. They talk and he tells her about the wedding and the baby that’s coming. He tries to be a good dad but things with Silvi don’t go well and she starts an affair with his old friend Calum. Eventually they get a divorce. Meanwhile Emma has moved to Paris. He joins her there thinking that they might finally get together for good, since apparently they spent a night together after he got divorced, but she didn’t think that that meant much for him, and she has a new boyfriend now, a French jazz pianist. Dexter is upset and decides to leave, but she realizes that she wants him and runs after him and they kiss and get together. They get married in London and are happy together, hoping to have children of their own, but it doesn’t happen.
We arrive at July 2006, the very first scene of the movie before it went back 18 years. She’s riding her bike, going to meet him, when she’s brutally hit by a truck and dies.
He doesn’t know how to go on with his life because after all even when they were not ‘together’ he knew she was always there for him, but now she’s dead. The next four years he cries and slowly destroys himself. His daughter and ex-wife find him bloody on the floor and try to help him. His father tells him that he must try to live his life as if Emma was still alive, the same thing he has done for the last ten years since Dexter’s mother died of cancer. Even Ian, who now has his own family, visits him to tell him that she “lit up” when she was with him and that he made her happy (yeah, for what, two years? :-/ ). Dexter has again control over his life, and visits with his daughter the same place he visited with Emma on that first day in 1988.
They finally show us what happened on that first day, after they woke up in the same bed, and decided to take a walk and they had a good time together and were now planning to finish what they hadn’t do the night before and they run to the apartment to have sex, but then they meet his parents, arrived early to surprise him, so there was nothing to do really but to go their separate ways, they simply left and he asked her her number.
It’s annoying because it’s the same old story: the guy’s idea of enjoying his life means sleeping with lots of girls that mean nothing to him at all, drinking himself stupid, being famous, basically sex-drugs-and-alcohol with lots of money to buy it all. Personally, it sounds so pathetically stupid and sad.
Of course the girl only has two guys in 18 years because a man sleeping around is a successful playboy enjoying life, a girl sleeping around would be called something completely different.
As soon as he is ready for her, she changes her life and whatever plan she might have had to run to him. :-/
It’s lovely because what they had was really special, and yet it’s frustrating because once again it shows that friendship doesn’t really exist and that a man and a woman only have one path together, no matter how long it takes them to get there.
It’s down-to-Earth because it shows a growing relationship based on phone-calls and ordinary lives, and yet it’s totally unrealistic because they are all so good in this movie, but it’s frustrating to see how this guy wasted it all.
Obviously I'm also upset that she died, because this makes the film about him, not about them. He gets to go on with his life with his daughter, but there's nothing to remember her by other than his memories and her book for children.
The actors were all good for the part, not just the protagonists but everyone else too, the parents, the friends, everyone.
Dexter-Jim Sturgess
Roommate-Jodie Whittaker
Ian-Rafe Spall
Dexter’s mother-Patricia Clarkson
Silvie-Romola Garai
One last thing: this is the only time in my life that I've wanted to see a movie because of its poster. I knew nothing about this film but I loved the poster so much, that picture of the two of them was simply beautiful. It's not just a picture of two people kissing, or almost kissing, I don't remember, it's the pose, the atmosphere, it's light and hopeful and beautiful.
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