Only You

An excep­tion­al amount of fine detail and rig­or­ous obser­va­tion have gone into the mak­ing of Only You, a palat­ably sweet and flighty roman­tic dra­ma with a neat con­tem­po­rary twist. But all the ground­work in the world wouldn’t be worth a jot if it weren’t for the two leads – Laia Cos­ta and Josh O’Connor – deliv­er­ing supreme­ly relaxed and intu­itive per­for­mances as a loved-up cou­ple who enter a sur­pris­ing rocky patch.

We often, when writ­ing about movies, refer to ​“chem­istry” when attempt­ing to deduce whether a screen part­ner­ship works of flops, and here, there’s enough chem­istry for 10 films, to the point where it would be unsur­pris­ing to dis­cov­er that we were watch­ing a real two­some bound­ing through the ardu­ous motions of young love. He, Jake, is a part-time DJ and PhD can­di­date in his mid-twen­ties. She, Ele­na, is an office work­er who’s clos­er to 40 than she is 30. The age dif­fer­ence is not an issue for either par­ty, but talk swift­ly turns to hav­ing chil­dren as she is wor­ried that her body clock is tick­ing close to midnight.

Writer/​director Har­ry Wootliff then has her char­ac­ters take an uncon­ven­tion­al, marked­ly less scenic route in search of an idyl­lic future, as their attempts at pro­cre­ation yield noth­ing. For its mid sec­tion, the film becomes a heart­break­ing insider’s look at the process of IVF treat­ment and the seem­ing­ly end­less hur­dles that need to be cleared before suc­cess hov­ers into the sight-lines. Cos­ta is incred­i­ble at sub­tly chan­nelling feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy while wrestling with the harsh real­i­ty that she has no real con­trol over her own bio­log­i­cal functions.

O’Connor, mean­while, is far more than the chip­per, sup­port­ive beau attempt­ing to feign the matu­ri­ty required in this sit­u­a­tion of con­sis­tent high-anx­i­ety. In her writ­ing and direc­tion, Wootlif refus­es to shirk from the dark­ness ahead, even if the film does take anoth­er shift before a some­what con­ven­tion­al third act wrap-up.