Only You (1994 film)
Only You is a 1994 American romantic comedy film about a young woman whose search for the man she believes to be her soulmate leads her to Italy where she meets her destiny.
- Directed by Norman Jewison, written by Diane Drake, starring Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey Jr., and Bonnie Hunt
Faith Corvatch
[edit]- I hope you're happy! I hope you're very happy! I don't believe in anything anymore! I don’t believe in the moon or the stars, or the sun … or destiny or magic — or MEN!
Peter Wright (aka Damon Bradley)
[edit]
- I'm Damon Bradley.
- Introducing himself to Faith, after she tells him the name of the man she is looking for.
- I can't believe you're gonna let a few little letters of the alphabet keep us apart. It is a detail! Just — look, just call me Damon, okay? It'll be like a nickname.
Kate Corvatch
[edit]- I married a liar. Why? Because I married a man.
Dialogue
[edit]- Faith: Okay, look. One hand, two hands. Put them together, and what do they make?
- Student: One.
- Faith: Right! So, Plato tells us we begin as circles, and when we strive to be like the Gods we were punished, by a thunderbolt that struck us, and cut us, right down, dead center, in half. We scattered to the ends of the Earth, search and search for our other half. Now, Plato is say, that if we just stop, [SNAPS FINGERS] and go with the flow, and follow our destiny, it'll lead us back to each other.
[SCHOOL BELL RINGS]
- Faith: Okay. Still following this, read from your green book. Remember,
[STUDENTS TALKING INDISTINCTLY]
- Faith: You are here.
- Peter: Yes, I am here, and very real. God! I'm trying to think — there's this poem by, um, Goethe? … yeah, Goethe, and its about two people come from different places, but they hear the same bird singing…
- Faith: "perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening"†
- Peter: That's it. Exactly.
- Faith: Wow. [pauses, gazing into his eyes] Yeah … It was Rilke.
- Peter: Rilke? [she nods] Oh well, same country... how'd you know?
- Faith: I could tell you some things.
- †: Faith here quotes Rilke's "You Who Never Arrived", as translated by Stephen Mitchell
- Faith: How could you do this to me?
- Peter: Because I'm in love with you!
- Faith: Ha! What kind of an excuse is that?
Theme songs
[edit]- Only you can make this world seem right
Only you can make the darkness bright
Only you and you alone
can thrill me like you do
and fill my heart with love for only you.- Only You (And You Alone), by Buck Ram, performed by Louis Armstrong · Louis Armstrong performance
- Only you can make this change in me
for it's true, you are my destiny
When you hold my hand
I understand the magic that you do
You're my dream come true
my one and only you.
Quotes about Only You
[edit]- It is total fantasy, light as a feather, contrary to all notions of common sense, it features a couple of stars who are really good kissers — and it takes place mostly in Venice, Rome, and the glorious Italian hillside town of Positano. What more do you want? Movies like this were once written for Katharine Hepburn (Summertime), Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday) and Rossano Brazzi (Three Coins in the Fountain). Or remember Clark Gable and Sophia Loren in It Happened in Naples? There is a case to be made that no modern actors have quite the innocence or the faith to play such heedless lovers, but Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. somehow manage to lose all the baggage of our realistic, cynical age, and give us a couple of fools in love.
- Only You gives us two people who should fall in love and live happily together for the rest of their days. They know it, we know it, and all of their friends know it. We also know with a confidence bordering on certainty that they will fall in love. And so there is a special kind of movie pleasure in watching them pigheadedly postpone their bliss — especially when they do it on Italian locations lovingly photographed by Sven Nykvist.
I can think of many angst-laden young Hollywood stars, many of them accomplished actors, who could not have come within miles of the work done by Downey and Tomei in this movie. There is craft involved, yes, and even a certain inspiration, but what I reacted to more strongly was an ineffable sense of good nature: Tomei and Downey seem happy in their being here, and happier together than apart. That it what must be present if we're to respond to a story like this.- Roger Ebert, in his review of Only You (7 October 1994)
Cast
[edit]- Marisa Tomei as Faith Corvatch
- Robert Downey Jr. as Peter Wright
- Bonnie Hunt as Kate Corvatch
- Tammy Minoff as young Faith
- Jessica Hertel as young Kate
- Joaquim de Almeida as Giovanni
- Fisher Stevens as Larry Corvatch
- Harry Barandes as young Larry
- Billy Zane as Harry, the false Damon Bradley
- Siobhan Fallon as Leslie
- John Benjamin Hickey as Dwayne, Faith's fiancé
- Adam LeFevre as the real Damon Bradley
- Antonia Rey as Fortune teller
- Phyllis Newman as Faith's mother
- Denise Du Maurier as Dwayne's mother
- Dina Morrone as Shoe Show Announcer
