365 Play Analysis

365 is an exotic, psychological character-driven drama that explores the sexual odyssey and journey of an obsessive man and a young woman. There are solid themes about respect, destiny, and boundaries. The script explores and examines moral arguments about love versus sex. The concept of the 365-day experiment is highly disarming and titillating.

The tone is surreal and cerebral. The story is told with great symbolism and subtext. There’s a non-conventional structure. The story feels like it mainly takes place in one setting, although there are other locations.

There are only two characters in the story. The structure consists mainly of the two core characters debating their individual philosophies of life and having sex in various positions

and locations.

While there’s definitely a lot to admire about this state-of-the-art script and the freshness of it’s storytelling voice, at the same time, the script isn’t an easy script to interpret and follow. Unfortunately, when a script becomes too ambiguous to follow, the emotional connection to the plot and characters are compromised.

First, the opening is engaging with John’s voiceover as the theme of 365 days is established. Although, it should be noted that one doesn’t understand the “last 5 hours, 40 minutes condensed narrative description.

There’s a clear pivotal plot beat with the meeting of John and Jane. The first act clearly establishes John’s obsessive personality for Jane. Jane also seems to have her own obsessive needs. The inciting event and catalyst that drives the story is John’s reveal of his 365 experiment. This is what propels the rest of the script.

However, act two feels repetitive and there’s no sense of the tension rising or that the story is building towards a powerful climax. There’s not enough sufficient tension driving act two. Act two feels recurring. They have sex, they talk, and they have sex, and talk more.

Conversely, the third act offers some intriguing series of events, especially when the sex becomes more dangerous and it builds towards the climax.

What the script does well is set up good anticipation of whether or not John and Jane will stay together after 365 times. While it’s not compelling tension, the audience does anticipate the resolution.

The idea that their relationship becomes more “conventional” at the end works. If understanding correctly, they marry and await the arrival of a baby. Essentially love wins over meaningless sex. It’s an insightful message.

However, there are events that are not clearly understood. There’s a very intriguing scene in which they turn 90 years old. For a moment, one thought this was the twist: that during this entire time John was living his younger life, while really old with Alzheimer’s, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. It’s not really clear the purpose of the scene or the purpose of them being babies.

The other concern is that the story is too reliant on telling the story through dialogue. The heavy dialogue becomes overwhelming. Some of the conversations are too cerebral and analytical, making it challenging to follow, interpret and/or engage. Dialogue at times feels disjointed: (Page 90), “Centre of feeling, emotion, pleasure, intimacy, connection.” Some scenes overwhelm with too much dialogue (page 103). Sometimes it’s not clear why a character says something, such as “I didn’t reply.” It’s not understood what she’s referring to.

With that said, however, there are definite strong moments of great insight when discussing issues about sex, love, life, and death. “Every woman wants to un-fuck the fucked up male. Save us.” The mainstream audience, especially women, can relate with this concept.

Dialogue also helps to reveal information about the characters, such as when Jane says, “Closer I felt, more he pulled away.” This reveals information about Jane’s feelings and her ability to love versus John’s resistance to love. “More we make love, less we feel love.” It’s great insight. Jane makes a telling statement, “so do you love me as much as you love yourself.” John using words like “project” and that he “owns” Jane reveals a lot about John’s personality.

Because the story is so reliant on dialogue, there’s a notable lack of visual storytelling. Remember, good visual storytelling helps bring the scene to life, as well as the characters. This helps the reader/producer visualize the action and setting. Visual storytelling can also help convey a character’s personality.

For example, in general, there’s a lack of highlighting a character’s emotional reaction to an event and a lack of visual storytelling establishing the scene. It would benefit the script to convert some of this dialogue into visual reactions and images. A character doesn’t always need to talk. Body language can convey an emotion and reaction, but the script lacks strong visual storytelling. There’s a scene when John reveals how many women he has been with and it would have been nice to see a visual reaction from Jane.

It should be noted the positions of sex i.e. upside down etc. symbolizes their relationship with each other. In other words, they do have an upside down relationship.

The other concern about the presentation is the formatting. It’s not standard formatting, making it much more challenging to read. The formatting is also not consistent. It begins with Title Cards and then some title cards actually have no titles and then the title cards disappear and some scenes just have numbers. The numbers presumably refer to the sex number. Some scenes lack proper scene headings. While it’s appreciated that this script isn’t conventional, proper formatting does help focus a script. For example, on page 109 “New Scene” isn’t properly formatted. They have dinner – but the reading audience has no idea where or what the setting looks like due to the lack of visual storytelling.

The script also tends to try and direct with camera directions: “a violent love scene shot in extreme close ups…” this is the role of the director and unless directing, references to how to shoot the scene is not normally proper.

John is clearly obsessive. He’s a rather cold character, who considers Jane a project and that he owns her (page 107). He’s not a fully likable character, because he’s so detached.

It’s challenging to really understand his motivation for engaging in this experiment and it’s challenging to understand his true feelings, and his real goal. Due to the nature of the structure, John feels too one-dimensional.

At the end, he transforms from being a non-committal man driven by his sexual desires, to a man who is driven by love. He has a self-realization transformation. His transformation, however, may be a bit challenging to fully believe due to his lack of emotion throughout the storyline. He really feels sociopathic and they don’t have genuine emotions.

Jane is a complex and confusing character.

It’s not understood why she would agree to the rules of their relationship. Little is truly known about her. Why she falls in love with John is also not well understood given the way he treats her as a project. The script doesn’t explore her psychological make-up. At the end, she appears to want a real commitment and to have a normal, ordinary life. Jane does sound older than being 19 years old.

They do share good chemistry with each other, but the audience doesn’t fully root for them because it’s not convincing that they belong with each other. Also, consider how they complement each other as well as how they challenge each other.

In summary, the story presents with a unique and refreshing voice. The idea of embarking on a sexual odyssey has merit, but the motivation for this odyssey is not well understood. The second act feels too repetitive and lacks sufficient tension. The script relies too much on dialogue and lacks sufficient visual storytelling. The characters need to feel more realistic and dimensional. The story would benefit from a stronger sense of tension rising. Some dialogue and scenes need clarification.

Finally, the script is much too long, as is the idea of a 150-minute film for this genre. This should be a script at 90 to 105 pages (approximately). The audience will disconnect from a story that relies on so much dialogue, especially one at this

length.