Is Netflix’s ‘Same Day with Someone’ More Than Just a Rom-Com?

The new Thai film Same Day with Someone presents itself, on its surface, as a romantic comedy constructed around the familiar cinematic trope of a temporal loop. The premise is straightforward: a privileged young woman is forced to relive the single worst day of her life until she can find a way to break the cycle. While comparisons to canonical works of the subgenre like Groundhog Day are inevitable, such parallels prove reductive. The film, a Netflix production with a runtime of 118 minutes, demonstrates a more deliberate and ambitious agenda. It leverages the accessible framework of a high-concept romantic comedy not as an end in itself, but as a sophisticated narrative vehicle for a nuanced and deeply felt exploration of psychological trauma and recovery. The filmmakers’ stated intention to create a work that stands apart from typical genre fare is evident from its conceptual foundations. The screenplay, penned by Rangsima Akarawiwat, was born from the experience of consoling a friend through heartbreak, leading to a conscious and explicit decision to allegorize the five stages of grief within the iterative structure of a time loop. This positions the film as a thoughtful subversion of its genre, using the mechanics of repetition to map the complex, non-linear process of healing.

The architecture of this repeating day is meticulously designed to deconstruct the protagonist’s meticulously constructed life. We are introduced to Mesa Worathepanant, a high-society curator whose existence is a testament to order, prestige, and control. Her catastrophic day, August 8, 2025, unfolds as a dual assault on her identity. First, her dream fiancé, a dashing figure played by Trisanu Soranun, abruptly ends their relationship, shattering her personal narrative of a perfect future. Concurrently, she endures a professional cataclysm when a priceless artifact under her care, the sacred Sirisila Stone, is damaged. This confluence of personal and professional failure creates the crucible in which she is trapped. The choice of profession is thematically resonant; a curator’s vocation is the preservation and organization of objects, the careful construction of narratives around value and history. Mesa’s life is, in essence, a curated exhibit of success. The time loop, therefore, becomes the ultimate antithesis to her being, a state of profound powerlessness that forces this master of control to confront a chaotic reality she can no longer arrange, catalogue, or contain.

At its core, the film functions as a compelling externalization of an internal psychological process. The narrative conceit of the time loop provides a tangible, visual grammar for the abstract emotional experience of grieving. Rangsima Akarawiwat’s screenplay transforms the Kübler-Ross model into a series of narrative actions, allowing the audience to witness Mesa’s journey through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventual acceptance not as an internal monologue but as a sequence of observable, trial-and-error experiments. In the initial loops, her actions are likely characterized by a frantic denial, attempting to patch up the day’s disasters with superficial fixes. As the futility of this approach becomes clear, her behavior shifts, cycling through destructive anger and desperate bargaining with the universe and the figures who populate her day. A period of listless resignation follows, a clear analogue for depression, before she begins to approach the repeating day not as a prison to escape but as a puzzle to be understood. This structural choice allows the film to explore the often-repetitive nature of processing trauma, where progress is not always linear. The stated goal of the production was to offer something as reassuring as a friend’s embrace, and it achieves this by demystifying the process of healing, presenting it as a difficult but navigable journey toward a new perspective on life’s challenges.

This psychological narrative is supported by a rich and symbolic mise-en-scène. The film is set in the fictional country of Chinlin, a deliberate world-building choice that detaches the story from a specific contemporary reality and places it within a slightly mythologized, fable-like space where an allegorical event like a time loop feels more plausible. The aesthetic of Chinlin is a composite, inspired by the art of diverse East Asian countries, creating a unique visual landscape. Central to this world is the grand and realistic Worathepanant Museum, which operates as a potent metaphor for Mesa’s own psyche: outwardly perfect, ordered, and impressive, yet containing a fragile core that is about to shatter. The production design is replete with what the filmmakers describe as hidden symbolism, inviting an attentive viewership. The most significant of these is the revered Red Ribbon Goddess statue, an object whose design, inspired by Tibetan art, incorporates a red ribbon tied into an infinity symbol. This is a direct visual articulation of the film’s central theme of endless cycles, a non-verbal cue that reinforces the protagonist’s predicament. Even Mesa’s wardrobe is imbued with meaning, each outfit reflecting her initial state of curated perfection and subtly changing as her internal landscape shifts. The aesthetic elements are not merely decorative; they are integral components of the film’s thematic architecture.

The formidable challenge of this narrative structure falls upon the performers, most notably lead actress Jarinporn Joonkiat. An accomplished and award-winning figure in Thai cinema, Joonkiat’s task is to portray a character who is externally static but internally dynamic. Her performance must function as a palimpsest, where each iteration of the day is layered with the cumulative psychological weight of all the loops that have come before. She must convey the mounting frustration, despair, and eventual wisdom gained from each failure, ensuring that the audience perceives the traces of past attempts beneath the surface of each “new” day. Her portrayal of Mesa’s bright and genuine kindness becomes the baseline against which her transformation is measured. The catalyst for this transformation appears in the form of Ben, an endearing and nerdy fellow curator played by Warintorn Panhakarn, a veteran of Thai television dramas. In their first on-screen pairing, their dynamic provides the film’s emotional anchor. Ben represents the one significant variable in Mesa’s repeating equation, the person with whom she can forge a new pattern of interaction. The narrative arc is driven by her evolving relationship with him across the loops, moving from initial dismissal to a gradual reliance and connection. The ensemble cast, which includes Charlette Wasita Hermenau as Mesa’s important colleague and Jaturong Phonboon providing comedic brilliance, contributes to a genuine chemistry that grounds the high-concept premise in believable human interaction, a hallmark of Thai performance styles that often seek a naturalistic “becoming” of the character.

Ultimately, Same Day with Someone is a work of notable artistic maturation for its key creators. Director Yanyong Kuruangkura, whose previous films like App War and Mother Gamer deftly blended comedy with contemporary social commentary, successfully pivots toward a more internal, character-driven narrative. The established creative partnership with screenwriter Rangsima Akarawiwat, who also penned App War, allows them to apply their proven facility for engaging, high-concept premises to a subject of greater emotional depth. The film fulfills Kuruangkura’s ambition to create something that stands apart from the typical rom-com, using the genre’s tropes as a foundation for a more profound inquiry into the human capacity for resilience. It is a feel-good story, but one that earns its warmth through a thoughtful examination of pain. The film’s final message is one of therapeutic optimism: the seemingly inescapable loops of our lives, whether born of grief or routine, are not merely prisons but can be crucibles for re-evaluation, growth, and the discovery of new connections. This heartwarming adventure is available for worldwide streaming on Netflix. The film was released on September 18.