Director & Writer: Monique Sorgen | Produced by: Monique Sorgen and Sean Akers | Country: United States | Runtime: 90 minutes | Type: Fiction Feature

On the same day, at the same time, two strangers decide to go hiking in the beautiful landscapes of Sedona, only to meet and discover how meaningful and fated their newfound connection is. That is the premise of One Day in Sedona, directed by Monique Sorgen and starring Alysia Reiner and Wallace Langham.

Life has a few stages at which a person stops to reconsider their path, and they often follow loss, change and hardship. The two characters we meet in One Day in Sedona are going through something similar. Julie is in her 50s, with no children and no family of her own, and she has recently lost her father. His death pushes her to find a way to live up to his legacy as a civil rights attorney and activist for equity, and to be a daughter worthy of him. Fate then brings her together with someone who is also searching for himself. Will, likewise in his 50s, has only just finalized his divorce. It has left him somewhat empty, and he is only now facing the need to rebuild his personal life and his sense of self. Their paths cross in the spiritual town of Sedona, where they decide to hike together. Along the way, they get to know each other, inspire each other, heal and eventually fall in love.

One Day in Sedona is a feature-length film that relies mainly on dialogue to convey what its two characters experience, feel and think, and to lead them to fall in love. To judge how well it delivers this story on screen, it helps to compare it with a film known for using conversation successfully as its driving force: Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995).

Anyone who has seen the Before Sunrise trilogy knows how conversation can become the plot itself. In the first film, Celine and Jesse meet and spend one day and one night together, and we follow them getting to know each other almost entirely through talk. Here, dialogue does more than introduce the characters. It pushes them to reveal their insecurities, traits and preferences by reacting rather than simply telling. It therefore cannot be emotionally flat. It has to stir up worry, excitement, frustration and happiness instead of leaning on casual exchange. This is the main difference between dialogue that works as drama and dialogue that sounds like a podcast. Another thing that keeps Before Sunrise from boring its audience is the way the characters respond to their surroundings. Their one-day adventure leads them through Vienna’s streets, tourist attractions and cultural sights, and this interaction with the city makes their thought process seem natural, as it prompts organic reflections on what they are experiencing in the moment.

One Day in Sedona seems to follow the same formula: two people meet unexpectedly, each already on a journey to a distant place, and choose to spend time together. Unfortunately, at one hour and thirty minutes, the viewer might find the film hard to sit through, and the main reason is the way Will and Julie’s dialogue is constructed.

The two talk at length about the fears a person has in the modern world: injustice, AI, income inequality, equity for women and LGBTQ+ people, spirituality, the impermanence of life and the betterment of society. These topics are widely discussed, and it is perfectly natural for two middle-aged strangers to start with social issues rather than baring their souls. The real problem, however, is the nature of their speech. The viewer might find their words and opinions neither sincere nor human. They come across as excerpts from articles and magazines, something overheard on social media, or, most of all, a patchwork of the most commonly held, impersonal views a person can have. Even if the two are not gifted philosophers or sociologists, which is understandable since many people build their views on broad public opinion, there should at least be some reactivity to give the viewer a reason to engage. Instead, Julie and Will simply pass the ball back and forth, trading uninteresting opinions, and neither responds to the other except with approval, genuine or feigned. Doubts and fears are never drawn out by emotional provocation. They are discussed head-on, as if these people were models of emotional intelligence. Without any glimpse of raw authenticity, the viewer might easily lose interest in them.

Several times, the film tries to inject the missing emotional depth artificially. Julie and Will discover that her late father was an important figure in the career of Will, who is also a lawyer. When Will learns that the influential man from his young adulthood has died, he bursts into tears out of nowhere. The moment is painfully uncomfortable because until then there has been no hint that he is emotionally vulnerable. Throughout the film, both characters stay remarkably composed for people at a fragile, self-defining stage of life, so their journey resembles a walk in the park more than a spiritual pilgrimage.

They have only two significant encounters with their environment and the people around them, and both ring false. In the first, they come across some Native spiritual figures who give them a fated gift, a half-heart for each of them made of gemstone. The symbolism is so on the nose that the film seems to be underlining its own romance for us, instead of letting the connection between the two characters build naturally. In the second, they join a spontaneous but unnatural, forced dance with young people blasting a pop song in the middle of the hike. These two scenes jar not only because they are poorly directed, but because everything else is shot mainly from a single tracking, eye-level point of view, with close-up singles and over-the-shoulder shots. Against that, the two scenes read as an abrupt shift in atmosphere. The rest of the film, meanwhile, is visually monotonous: the same few angles repeat for the entire hike, so the breathtaking landscape fades behind the faces and the conversation never gets a change of space or rhythm to support it.

The other technical elements do little to help. The original score is generic, adding nothing distinctive to the film’s emotional world. The pacing is dictated entirely by the dialogue, and combined with the visual monotony, it leaves the film slow and unengaging. Some of the cuts are also not technically well executed, suggesting either mistakes made on set or a lack of sense for perfect cut timing.

The ending is a further weak point. It tries to create interest by suggesting the two might never meet again: Will receives an emergency call from his daughter and suddenly runs off, without the two having shared phone numbers or last names. This is a cheap device, because exchanging contact details with someone you have already become physically close to takes only a few seconds.

In fairness, Alysia Reiner (Julie) and Wallace Langham (Will) do their best to give their characters natural physicality and mannerisms, even with weak writing and direction. Their performances were the one thing that kept me engaged with the action, or the lack of it, on screen.

Flaws aside, I can’t deny that One Day in Sedona is beautifully shot, and its scenery is a pleasure to watch. The characters are likeable, and the film could work well as something light and cozy to put on while doing something else at home. But that is also the problem. Before Sunrise rewards your full attention because its characters react to each other and to the world around them. Here, the conversation never provokes anything real, and a film built entirely on conversation has little left to offer once that fails.