The Next 365 Days Closes a Trilogy That Never Found Its Voice

Anna-Maria Sieklucka’s Laura Torricelli stares at her own reflection in the film’s opening minutes, a woman caught between two men and her own uncertain desires. The Next 365 Days opens with that image of internal conflict, and it never quite works out how to resolve it. Directed by Barbara Białowąs and Tomasz Mandes, this Polish erotic drama closes out the trilogy adapted from Blanka Lipińska’s novels, and it inherits every flaw of its predecessors: a muddled story, thin performances, and almost no new ideas.

The film picks up where 365 Days: This Day left off, with Massimo (Michele Morrone) and Laura navigating the wreckage of past betrayals while Nacho (Simone Susinna) keeps circling back into her life. That’s a workable setup for a love triangle. It should generate real tension. Instead the script leans on the same arguments about trust and jealousy over and over, and the repetition drains whatever stakes the relationship once had. Scenes where Laura and Massimo confront each other over her connection to Nacho play like rehashes of the earlier films rather than fresh turns in their story.

Sieklucka and Morrone still have chemistry, but the writing wastes it, flattening both of them into archetypes. Laura swings between strong-willed and passive depending on what the scene needs from her, while Massimo stays locked into the brooding, possessive routine he’s played since the first film. Clunky dialogue doesn’t help; Laura’s musings about getting a second chance at life land as forced lines rather than anything resembling insight.

Recommended ReadingStopmotion (2023). Movie Review: Animated Horror Rhythm

Her internal struggle is the one genuinely interesting thread here, and even that gets mishandled. Her recurring dreams about Nacho, her confusion about which man she actually wants — there’s a real story buried in that, one with room for nuance. The film ignores it and reaches for erotic set pieces instead, using them as a substitute for character work rather than an extension of it, as in the scene where Laura and Massimo have sex after watching a private strip performance.

Pacing is another problem. At one hour and forty-five minutes, the film feels padded rather than full. Scenes run long without moving the plot or telling us anything new about who these people are. The fashion fair sequence in Portugal exists mainly to engineer another run-in between Laura and Nacho, and even the film’s climactic confrontation between Laura and Massimo passes without the emotional weight it’s clearly meant to carry.

The craft is functional at best. Nothing in the cinematography stands out — no shot asks to be remembered. The sound design is just as anonymous, falling back on generic score cues and overused effects to manufacture drama the scenes themselves haven’t earned.

Reviews elsewhere have not been kind. Variety called it strictly “for masochists,” and Spoiled For Choice framed it as a franchise squandering whatever potential it once had. Viewer reactions on IMDb single out the acting and the script as the film’s biggest liabilities, complaints that track with what’s on screen here.

The back half of the story doesn’t resolve so much as stall. Laura retreats to Poland, where her mother reminds her that her thirtieth birthday is approaching, nearly a year since she first met Massimo, and urges her to think about her own happiness for once. It’s a rare quiet scene, and one of the few moments where the film treats Laura as a person rather than a prize to be fought over. It doesn’t last. She dreams of a threesome with both men, gets a call from Olga warning her that Massimo now knows about the affair, and heads back to Sicily anyway. When she arrives, Nacho is waiting for her disguised as her own chauffeur, telling her that what he feels isn’t love at first sight but something that grew out of friendship. Laura says she needs time to think. So, it turns out, does the movie: it ends without deciding what any of this was building toward.

That’s the frustrating part. The love triangle trope has worked before, and there was room here for something genuine about desire, loyalty, and figuring out who you are once the drama settles. Instead the film keeps reaching for awkwardly staged erotic encounters and shouting matches, as if volume could stand in for depth. The Next 365 Days goes through the motions of its own trilogy, closing it out with the same weak performances, repetitive dialogue, and dragging pace that defined the two films before it.

Cast

Photos: The Movie Database (TMDB)

Tags: romance, Anna-Maria Sieklucka, Barbara Białowąs, Michele Morrone, Simone Susinna, Tomasz Mandes

More Like This

Hilma: A Visual Feast That Struggles With Pacing

The Last House — in Louis Leterrier’s Netflix thriller, the sealed door is not the threat; the marriage is

“Love Is in the Air” (2023) | Rom-Com on Netflix. Review: The usual movie

Barn Scene Undermines *Exorcist: Believer*’s Tension

‘The Lost Patient’ (2022) – Movie Review: What Seemed Promising Is Lost in the Process

Accused: When Reputation Collapses Before the Facts Do