One of the biggest success stories of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was The One I Love, a relationship comedy with a science-fiction twist.
Mark Duplass (The League) and Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) play an out-of-love couple who venture to a secluded retreat to reignite their marriage. Once there they discover hidden secrets that may hold the spark they’ve needed all along.
Many of the film’s surprises are what make the story unique so spoiling as little as possible makes for the best viewing experience. On a recent promotional trip to San Francisco, Mark Duplass and the film’s director Charlie McDowell (Malcolm McDowell’s son) made it very clear they prefer audiences see their film with as little detail as possible.
With that in mind, The One I Love is worth seeking out and the following is our conversation with Duplass and McDowell where we discuss the intricacies of the film with as few spoilers as possible.
Q: Have you found it difficult to talk about the movie without giving away any of its surprises?
Mark Duplass: It’s certainly tricky and it would be more fun if we could just blast out, talk about it and explore because it is such a good conversation piece. But at the end of the day we’ve discovered that you do better with this movie when you don’t know what’s in there.
Q: Was the movie pitched to you in a similarly secretive way or did you know everything from the beginning?
Duplass: We birthed the movie together. Charlie and I met and talked about making a small movie together. So I gave him this kernel of an idea that could be a movie and then he and his writing partner fleshed it out in an outline.
Q: The couple in this movie is very similar to a lot of modern couples where each partner is busy with their own life and eventually they grow apart. How much distance did you want to put between them at the start of the movie?
Charlie McDowell: The couple in this movie is in a place where they’re in a run and what we try to do is to see how to get them out of it or should they get out of it at all. A lot of times couples say, ‘should we cut our losses and move on?’ Some people do and some people don’t. We wanted to come in where there’s this separation between them and now they’re stuck. A lot of times something needs to happen for a couple to get out of that rut. That’s what kickstarts our movie, this shot to figure out their relationship.
Q: Were there any alternate ways you were thinking of ending the movie?
Duplass: No, we really like that ending. There were lots of steps and ladders that led to that ending. Without giving too much away it was very important that this movie was a conversation piece. It’s not a statement by us saying what couples should or shouldn’t be but a conversation piece instead.
Q: In the editing process, how did you find the right balance between giving just enough away so the audience wasn’t ahead of you?
McDowell: Ultimately it’s about tracking the characters and where they’re at emotionally so despite the twists and turns it’s about finding the characters and bringing those two things together.
Q: You already had Mark from the beginning, how did you bring Elizabeth Moss to the film?
McDowell: It started because Mark had a friendship with Elizabeth and she had expressed an interest in making one of these small, intimate movies. I loved that idea and it was also around the time Top of the Lake was coming out and I had just seen her in that and blew my mind. We gave her the script in an early stage so we were able to get her voice and have her give notes and ideas so we could rewrite things around her, knowing she was going to play the character.
Duplass: What I was able to bring was one perspective that was different from everyone else’s. I’ve been with my wife for twelve years and we have kids so I was someone who was in the longest relationship and had experienced commitment in the longest shape or form. It was great because we all had different relationship perspectives but we all shared similar core experiences.
Q: You’re going from city to city answering a lot of the same questions, is there one question you wish would go away?
Duplass: You know what I would like, a more pointed opening question because the opening question is normally, “how did this project come about?” I would like an interesting and more pointed way into that question. I don’t know what the answer is because I see the value in getting that answer from a press perspective but we get it in that form so often that I’d say you’d get a much better, more inspired answer if you come at it from another way.
McDowell: What we always get in Q&A’s is, “what does the end mean?” It’s always about the meaning.
The One I Love is now playing in limited release and on video on demand.
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