365 Days: I am Totally Lost, Baby Girl

365 Days (365 dni) follows the story of a young woman, Laura, who is kidnapped by a Sicilian mob boss, Massimo, and given 365 days to fall in love with him.

No, this is not the plot of a Criminal Minds episode – this is an actual movie you can find underneath the Romance section on Netflix that has (for some reason) taken the world by storm.

And I friggin’ watched it…
(Probably because I am a masochist – that seems like the only logical reason for me to have done so)

I do believe what you hear and read others say can really influence your own opinion about a movie (in one way or another) before even seeing it, which is why I try to go into a film with no expectations (whether high or low) created by strangers’ opinions online (ironic, I know, seeing that I am one of these strangers). But sometimes this is quite hard to do when reviews and posts about a film pop up on every corner of the internet.

I saw 365 Days being torn apart by critics, but it still remains one of the most popular movies on Netflix.

Now, oftentimes, I have found that critics get it wrong and relatively good movies (that were adored by audiences) end up with criminally low Rotten Tomatoes scores.

This was not the case with 365 Days – the critics got this one right.

Even if you don’t take into consideration how problematic it all is, the movie (and I use the term ‘movie’ lightly) is bad. (And I’m not talking about bad like how The Room is bad, which makes it quite fun, I’m talking about just plain unwatchable bad)

Remember when Twilight came out and took the world by storm?
Now, go to a couple of years later when Fifty Shades of Grey made its appearance and we all found out it started out as Twilight fanfiction, but for mom. (I know, it’s hard to think about these times and not cringe, but stay with me here)

Now think about the Fifty Shades franchise and its take on the Twilight Saga.
This is exactly what this movie is, but with Beauty and the Beast.
(Ooh, isn’t that sexy?! 😐)

The film opens with Massimo and his father on a rooftop busy with a mob deal-making thing or whatever. They reject an offer of 12-year-old slaves from the other meeting attendees (you know, because they are the ‘good guys’) and Massimo’s father is killed and Massimo himself gets injured in the process.

Before all this shit goes down, Massimo stares at a woman on the beach through binoculars (as one does), and we get a little exchange between father and son, where Massimo’s father tells him that he has to take over the family business soon.

Five years later we get introduced to our other main character Laura, a (supposedly) strong, no-nonsense, stands-her-ground-type woman.

The movie goes back and forth between Massimo and Laura as we see them living their lives and interacting with the people around them. Scenes are inter-cut – one second we’re with Laura, and she says something and then we move on to Massimo and he says something, and back again to Laura, making a fool of a douche-bag colleague, then back to Massimo, blackmailing his financial advisors.

It’s like the filmmakers wanted to show these two side-by-side and say: “Look! These two live such different lives, but at the core, they’re the same. Oh, what a couple they would make!”

During one of these back and forth scenes, is where the movie makes its first real mistake. (Not that everything before this was flawless, but this is the first time the movie made me pull a face like I was smelling two-week-old Chinese take-out)

Laura comes home to her shitty boyfriend and he tells her that he can’t spend time with her, because he’s busy doing whatever useless boyfriends do, I guess. Cut to Massimo on his private jet where he is given some not-so-good news. We then get treated to a back and forth of Laura masturbating (a normal, healthy part of being human) and Massimo borderline forcing a stewardess to blow him (a less normal and healthy part of being human).

Why they decided to have these scenes play off side by side to show how ‘equally’ debaucherous our two main characters are, is beyond me. These two things (as well as the implications of the acts themselves) are not similar whatsoever.

Laura heads to Sicily for her 29th birthday with boyfriend and best friend in tow. The first night they are in a restaurant/club type place where they do the whole awkward singing “Happy Birthday” and boyfriend speech thing. Laura excuses herself to go and find a restroom and literally bumps into Massimo. He stares at her and asks the following (a phrase he, unfortunately, uses more than once in this film): “Are you lost, baby girl?”, before disappearing as quickly as he appeared.

The next day is Laura’s actual birthday and she is abandoned by her boyfriend because he wasn’t done with his useless boyfriend tasks from earlier. They have a fight and Laura shoves him into the hotel pool.

For the rest of the day, I guess Laura was wandering the streets in her sleepwear because straight after the lovers’ quarrel, we see Laura, wearing a tiny nightgown in a small alleyway late at night, where she is trapped and taken by an unknown man.

She wakes up in a castle (no, I’m not exaggerating – in case you were still not picking up on the Beauty and the Beast thing, the filmmakers thought they’d make our hero live in an actual castle, just to really drive their point home). Again, she bumps into Massimo and he uses his catchphrase (queue old-Chinese-take-out-face).

As expected, Laura loses it and berates Massimo, demanding that he let her go. He then tells her a story that he refers to as “so incredible”, but basically just recounts the rooftop scene at the beginning of the movie and mentions that he saw her on the beach and that he has been looking for her ever since.

Understandably, she tells him that she isn’t an object that he can just take ownership of. He tells her that he is aware of this fact, and that is why he will give her 365 days to fall in love with him. If by her 30th birthday, she hasn’t changed her mind, he will set her free. (What an offer, am I right?)

Most of the movie, from then, is basically them playing games with one another. It’s the classic tale of Boy sees Girl and takes her prisoner, Girl does everything in her power to make Boy turned off by her but ends up tied to a bed and forced to watch Boy receive oral from another woman to make her see what she’s missing out on (tale as old as time).
(Seriously, like 15% of this movie consists of shots of the back of different women’s heads as they blow Massimo)

This continues for quite some time, up until the big turning point in the film.

Massimo and Laura are on his yacht (for some reason) and they get into one of their usual ‘fights’. She falls overboard and he jumps in after her.

Laura wakes up in a bed and Massimo, though thankful that she is alive, still scolds her for being “disobedient”. This is the point where she realises that, even though he kidnapped her, cut off her communication to the outside world, restricts her movement and mumbles every word he speaks, he is not such a bad guy after all, and they proceed to have sex on every surface of the yacht for the next couple of days (I can only assume that they were on that boat for days, that’s how long the scene felt, anyway).

I guess you can say this scene is the one everyone was waiting for (this is the reason people watch these types of movies, right?), and if you were one of these people who were only here for the ‘good parts’, I do apologise that you had to sit through almost 2 hours of this crap, only to find out that the movie does not have any ‘good parts’.

It’s not that I have a problem with explicit sex scenes in films, if they add to the story, by all means, throw in some soft-core porn into an R rated movie, but this scene just didn’t do it for me, unfortunately. Apart from it coming out of nowhere (as well as the ickiness of it all), this whole sequence felt less sexy and more like a scene a teenager (who has never had sex before) would repeatedly watch while looking over their shoulder, in case they need to change the channel before their parents walk into the room.

Laura and Massimo attend a ball, where they run into Massimo’s ex, and she is clearly not over the breakup (seeing as she jokingly threatens Laura’s life during a dance with Massimo). Things get awkward and the couple leaves (yes, that is literally the entire scene).

As tensions rise between rival mafia families, largely because of Laura and Massimo’s relationship, Laura gets sent back to Poland where she catches up with her friend and changes her hair.

On a night out, Laura bumps into her ex-boyfriend and he follows her to where she is staying (her hotel room? her friend’s house? her place? I’m not entirely sure, I was barely paying attention at this point, to be honest). She struggles to make him leave until Massimo, who was waiting for her (alone and in the dark), steps in and tells him to leave. He does so and Laura and Massimo can get back to the foundation of their relationship – sex on a couch and later sex against the window (the basis of all healthy relationships). During this, we get the emotional climax of the film, where Laura tells Massimo that she doesn’t need 365 days because she is already in love with him. Massimo asks Laura to marry him, she accepts and they go back to Sicily together.

Laura’s best friend comes through for the wedding (Laura is only allowed one guest – her bridesmaid – because of Mafia reasons) and we find out during one of their ‘girl talks’ that Laura is pregnant but Massimo doesn’t know yet.

On their way back from trying on wedding gowns (or some other woman activity), Laura is on the phone with Massimo. Cut to Massimo’s right-hand man receiving a tip that someone is planning to kill Laura. Laura’s car disappears into a tunnel and just as the right-hand man runs up to Massimo, his call with Laura is disconnected. Massimo sees his associate and immediately understands the look on the man’s face and falls to his knees in grief. Police arrive at the tunnel where Laura disappeared into and the movie ends (no, seriously, it ends there).

At first, I thought, “Ugh, they really tried to give this movie substance by throwing a main character death into the mix?”, but then I found out the movie is based on the first of a whole series of books, so Laura probably isn’t dead and maybe our screens will be graced with two more horrendous movies (which I won’t be watching).

I try to see the positives in films, I really do, but with this film, it was really difficult. The nicest thing I can say about 365 Days is this (and I’m digging deep here guys): The film crew was competent, as in the camera operator knows how to hold and work a camera and the editor knows how to take a bunch of clips and put them together.

Trying to find the negative in this film was less difficult. You will see I use a lot of phrases like “I guess” and “or whatever” when going through the plot of the film, and there is a reason for this (apart from my obvious lack of interest or care for the characters and everything that happens to them). Despite it being such a bare-bones plot, it’s hard to follow – instead of a coherent story, the viewers just get a bunch of things that happen (some, for no apparent reason) stringed together to create a two-hour-long sequence. I know these erotic-drama-type movies don’t put a lot of effort into the actual story or its characters (which is one of my major issues with the genre), but at least Fifty Shades sorta, kinda had reasons or explanations for the decisions the characters made and certain things that happened during its runtime.

Take Laura, for instance, she is supposed to be this badass executive, who doesn’t take shit from anyone – you really want me to believe that she would not only be in a relationship with the douche that is her boyfriend at the beginning of the movie but that she is also the type of person who would fall in love with someone like Massimo?

Ugh, and do not get me started on Massimo. Is this really the type of guy people fantasise about? (If so, I need to step up my shit, because I get all hot and bothered when a guy corrects someone for saying “Frankenstein” when referring to the Monster instead of the Doctor)

It’s like the filmmakers went: “Okay, think about your worst nightmare, whether it’s a guy who holds you captive, a guy whose diet consists mainly of baby pandas, or a guy that pronounces it ‘expresso’ (whatever sinks your boat). Now, imagine if this guy was…wait for it…decent looking! Doesn’t that sound wonderful!?”

Massimo has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever. The movie tries to throw in a scene here and there (as well as pit him against Laura’s current awful less-attractive boyfriend) to make him seem like the good guy but alas, it wasn’t enough.

A personal favourite example of this is a scene near the beginning of the movie where Massimo punishes (and eventually kills) one of his employees when he finds out the man was involved in the trading of underage sex-slaves. I might be wrong, but being against the idea of children being sold and used for sex does not automatically make you a ‘good guy’. That is the default setting! That’s like putting “anti-bigot” as a descriptor in your Twitter bio. (Call me optimistic, but when I first meet someone, I assume that they are against this sort of thing until they do or say something that proves otherwise).

I repeat: Massimo is not a catch!

Maybe I am missing the appeal, but I doubt it. Look, I get it. There is something quite sexy about a man who takes charge and can challenge me from time to time, but I personally prefer it when they do it using intellect and humour as opposed to sheer brute force.

365 Days feels less like an erotic journey between two similar people and more like a fifteen-year old’s wet dream where “No” means “Yes” and the only way to any woman’s heart is persistence, lots of money and that space between her thighs (oh, and being against human-trafficking is also a bonus fallback, you know, in case the whole ‘lots of money’ thing doesn’t work).