One Day – All Aspects of Family Life

The concept of the film, at first glance, is incredibly simple: everything revolves around the image of one woman, one family, which unfolds within about 24 hours. However, gradually following the well-adjusted schedule of the characters, observing their ordinary life, we draw for ourselves much more than we expected from the title.

It all starts with a strange unexpected visit in the evening: the main character Anna has been visited by her friend who was not afraid to confess her love to her husband and the father of her three children. There was no romance between the characters, and the conscience of the participants in the triangle would seem to be clear, but the unbearable anxiety does not leave Anna and the attempt to drown her in routine turns out to be unsuccessful.

Surprisingly, without resorting to artistic violations of chronology, Jofia Siladi seems to really show us the whole day of heroes in their purest form. But the most interesting thing is not even this, but the fact that in this reflection of the familiar life we notice more contradictions and mistakes than living all the same on our own. The husband does not respond to the wife's request to swear his loyalty, does not participate in the family life. Children are not heard in the house, their individuality is ignored, they are not allowed to fantasize, they are driven into a series of boring and meaningless duties. The mother can't stop hitting the eldest son, who is still too young to be a support, and the foolishness and self-will, the children's response, is often met with a hunger strike. At the same time, everything is done not with evil, but on the contrary, in a completely natural attempt to make life better, it's just easy to live and love.

One Day loses its entertainment function, but it gets something more important: the film explains, teaches and shows the roles in the family so that you begin to appreciate more the contribution and work of the parents who do not let the family break up , and at the same time arrange life, work and upbringing, development of children. We can't say that the picture becomes a self-help guide for those who plan to build their family in the near future, but it definitely reveals the main package of difficulties of adult life.

Some critics point out that this film is a domestic drama, shot with the tension of a thriller. This is probably one of the most accurate expressions. The whole mood of the film was determined by the first scene where the main character was in a state of intense thinking and confusion while everyone else was engaged in their casual activities ignoring the circumstances of the meeting. A large number of close-ups that narrow the space and as if keep the characters in vice, periodically annoying sounds of a baby crying, sirens, calls and loud music that is imposed on the characters themselves against their will. Thanks to all this, the director manages to bring to the limit the viewer's psyche and his involvement in the process of finding solutions to problems.

With all this, the climax of this domestic thriller is lost in the schedule of ordinary life. Like in life, one day is replaced by another, the same way as in Siladi's picture, in terms of everyday life, the emotional peak is smoothed out, and a tear on the viewer's cheek arises not because of any particular event or point, but from a combination of tension and thoughts that cut through the film.

What's interesting in this work is that there's a game with the meanings of spaces. The main location in the film is still the apartment of the characters: anyway, this is really a fortress that accumulates the energy of people's relationships, a place where family members return after all their circles, classes, work and other things. However, as it turns out, the entire film, from the very beginning to the last minute, leads both of us - the viewer and the main character - to the need to build their own meager, shaky, defenseless and hopeless world inside the first one.