Guys, today's review is about the movie One More Time, which premiered recently on Netflix, when I started watching it the first thing I thought was damn I'm going to cry with this movie, because these stories about going back to the past, look back, reevaluate life these stories move me, especially now in May 2023, when I am about to complete another year of life, but I have to honor the mission and do my ironic review, and what more ironic than talking about life and the choices we make.
Well, the film tells the story of Amelia (Hedda Stiernstedt), who, dissatisfied with her current life, makes a request to return to her eighteenth birthday, she then goes into a never-ending mope reliving that same date over and over again.
We start the film having a glimpse of what Amelia's birthday party was like, but soon we are taken with her to a reality where, where she is standing on a sidewalk and a tour group passes by on a bus and throws water at her, then we see Amelia arrive at her work, and we discover that, in fact, she is turning forty, and totally apathetic and unhappy with her life, Amelia treats a client super badly and after arguing with her boss she resigns and goes to the bar, there crying her heart out to her friend she sees an old childhood friend Fiona (Miriam Ingrid) and the two complements each other, and Amelia continues to drink, her friend bartender then advises her to go for a walk. On her way back, Amelia decides to dig up a time capsule that she and Fiona, whom she has just bumped into at the bar, had buried together as teenagers to be unearthed when they were eighteen. She tries to read what her friend wrote and ends up having an accident, thus being taken to her eighteenth birthday repeatedly times.
Little by little, as the days go by, she discovers that not everything she thought was amazing and wonderful when she was eighteen was, in fact, amazing and wonderful because at first, she wants to enjoy everything again, but with the awareness of a forty-year-old woman, she realizes that much of it makes no sense, She then starts looking for ways to find her way back, but everything she does seems useless, except that in the process she realizes how many important things she missed in her youth and especially how many special people, like her childhood friend, she neglected for things that now, in the light of her forties, seem so frivolous and unimportant.
Going round and round in an endless loop, she realizes that being eighteen again has not improved her feelings of inadequacy, much less made her happy again, and all she has now is the certainty that she was a bit selfish and too shallow, and she goes searching for trying to make things right, between her, her eighteen-year-old self, and the people who were part of that time in her life, to maybe find her way back to her present life.
And after trying everything, she understands that the main person with whom she has to reconnect is her childhood friend, she then does everything from almost forcing the girl to watch a movie with her, to supporting her in front of the school, this last one giving a certain result, but not enough for the friendship to be reestablished, she then decides to go to the time capsule and when opening the capsule, she is almost stopped by her friend who doesn't want her to discover her secret, but she finally discovers the secret that her friend was in love with her all this time.
Currently, she then awakens and back to reality, she goes to her friend's party, but getting there she loses courage and runs away desperate, after talking to her boss, who welcomes her and gives her job back, she goes to her parents' house, after all what better place to reunite with our essence than our parents' house, isn't it, well, at least for most people I believe it works, Amelia now reconnected to reality returns to the place where the capsule was buried to reflect on everything that let pass in her life.
When she is in her inner dialogue, Fiona appears, and the two finally make peace with the past and make room for each other, in their lives, as friends or girlfriends, I don't know, but I'm sure now with much more maturity and commitment.
One more time is a light and funny story that makes us reflect about ourselves when we were Amelia's age, who were you at eighteen, what did you believe, or believe, what was or is important to you, and the people in your life as you treated or treat them, in case there is someone of eighteen reading this blog which I find difficult, but come on, who were or who are we at eighteen.
Certainly for those like me or like Amelia who have already done or are close to doing forty years, are certainly today totally different people from those who were when they were eighteen, and in my opinion, the most significant value of this film is in making us reflect on who we were when we were eighteen, who we wanted to be and who we have become.
That's what Amelia's whole crazy journey is about, and, in fact, that's what our whole life journey is about, and in my opinion, it doesn't matter what the point of reference is, whether it's eighteen or twenty, the fact is that when we are young, we see and do things in an almost instinctive way based on our short life experience and as the years go by, and we live and with that gaining knowledge, we do things in a more calculated and rational way, and as the years go by some of us look back, and then we tend to have two reactions, or we are going to fantasize about the past like Amelia, imagining that when we were younger, everything was perfect and that the fault for our problems lies in the past, or we will be Amelia after several loops and look at the past in an honest way, recognizing that yes, those times were good, but not perfect, and that yes, we did things that if we could go back we would do differently, but we can't, and we have to accept that we did the best we could with the conscience we had.
We have to do the exercise of forgiving ourselves to understand that life is not a movie and that we will not be able to go back in time repeatedly until we understand what we lost and wake up to have a new chance like Amelia and Fiona, so all we can do is accept and respect who we were at eighteen and accept and respect who we are at forty, understanding that if life is good, it was all the mistakes and successes that brought us here and that if it is not as we would like, it is in our hands to do here and now something to change and get the life we dream of because the point is not to be eighteen or forty, the point is to be happy with who you are regardless of age.
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