THE STORY – When Ivy meets a jazz musician on the train one fateful morning, she discovers alternate realities, one where she rekindles her passion for music and the other where she reconnects with her ex. In this messy true to life tale which life gives Ivy everything she truly desires?
THE CAST – Emilia Clarke, Édgar Ramírez & Jack Farthing
THE TEAM – Drake Doremus (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 112 Minutes
We’ve all replayed a moment from our lives and wondered what could have happened instead if we had made a different choice. Or those moments where you meet someone and wonder if it could have worked out at a different time, in a different place. “See you in the next life.” “Maybe in the next life.” You’ve heard those sentiments before, and “Next Life” plays entirely around that concept. The latest from writer-director Drake Doremus takes the universal contemplation of what could have been or what could be and builds something genuinely beautiful around it.
Emilia Clarke plays Ivy, a woman we meet in a rush, cursing at her Billie Holiday clock, sprinting for a train, late to her goddaughter’s christening. In classic meet-cute fashion, she runs into a handsome stranger and douses him and her perfectly pink dress in hot coffee. His name is Diego (Édgar Ramírez), a Venezuelan jazz musician now at a career plateau, and the conversation that follows sparks several things. It sparks romance, a do-over, and a rediscovery of Ivy’s love of music and singing.
Just as soon as the pair meet for the first time, the title card appears, and the scene surprisingly repeats. Ivy rushes to make the train to her goddaughter’s christening, but this time, she doesn’t spill her coffee on Diego. They still sit across from each other on the train, but without that, dare I say, hot interaction, they don’t speak. From here, the film plays “Sliding Doors”-style across two parallel timelines: one where Ivy falls headlong into this new life with Diego, and one where she rekindles her relationship with Noah, her ex-boss and ex-boyfriend – a breakup she’s still recovering from.
It’s honestly a pretty cool concept. There’s a bit of sci-fi in the mix, with the alternative-realities element of the script, but the film wears that hat lightly. Doremus and his team make the dual-timeline structure remarkably seamless. We can easily follow the difference immediately due to a wardrobe change of a denim shirt and jeans in the one timeline where Ivy spills her coffee on herself and Diego. The editing between timelines is well done, too, making the storytelling easy to follow and never jarring in its transitions.
But as “Next Life” goes on, the biggest difference between the two timelines that you come to know, and what is handled also really well, is in its lighting and color schemes. The timeline Ivy shares with Diego is warm, texturally and cinematographically like autumn. In one scene, Ivy sits on the floor in dim lamplight listening to records. They share a large studio apartment with brick walls, surrounded by art and music, bathed in a gorgeous golden light. In contrast, the life she shares with Noah is as cold as a winter in New York. It’s cold and dull by design: a sleek penthouse with a parliament building view in London, her work in a lifeless corporate office, their overly polished life together. Comfortable but colorless. The two timelines don’t just tell you which life to prefer; they show you through costume and color and cinematography, before you fall too deep into each version of Ivy’s life.
The film’s score, composed by four-time Oscar nominee Dan Rome, leans into the romantic tones of the 1930s, which suit both the jazz-soaked scenes in London, where Ivy sings in various clubs, and the warmth of those scenes and the contemplative mood of the overall piece. Clarke herself is fantastic here, forehead acting and all. Even when Ivy is technically the same person in both times, the slight differences Clarke brings, from a look here to an inflection there, genuinely make you feel you’re watching two different women, even if slightly, as the parallel timelines transpire differently. In the Diego timeline, she sings again, lumionously. In the Noah timeline, she says she’s happy, but Clarke’s performance clues you into what Ivy really feels without her having to say anything at all.
“Next Life” is honest enough not to offer a single perfect timeline and a single bad one. Life with Diego brings pregnancy and its own complications. Life with Noah brings comfort and a quiet yearning for motherhood that never resolves. For all of its strengths, the film does start to drag over its nearly two hours. But the emotional payoff earns it. No matter how you dream your life to be, the film argues, it will always turn out differently because it won’t be perfect. The film’s central idea that in the next life you can try again is one it clings to successfully, and ties up so well in the end.
