Could’ve, Would’ve, Should’ve – Inside In Every Life But This One
- Yukthamugi
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
Sometimes a film sneaks up on you. You watch the trailer; you think you know what you're in for – and then the lights go down, and something unexpected happens. You feel it.
That is exactly the experience of watching In Every Life But This One, the love child of two final-year creative project students, Belle Khoo and Raja Sofea Qistina, and the latest offering from BayProductions, the team behind Free Fall. Going in, the question on everyone’s lips was: was this a sapphic love story, a friendship breakup, or a slow-burning coming-of-age story? The answer, delightfully, is yes, all of it, and then some.
Let's talk aesthetics first, because it is a genuinely lovely film to look at. The colour grading was warm and softly muted, with an energy that recalls early 2000s Malay cinema. It gives the whole thing a quality that sits somewhere between a memory and a daydream; familiar like something you watched on a lazy Sunday afternoon as a kid and never quite forgot.
And those lingering shots, those unhurried silences that most directors would trim in the editing room? They stay. They breathe. They let you sit inside a moment with the characters in a way that feels less like watching a film and more like being in the room. It is a bold stylistic choice, and it pays off.
Eliza: The Character Who Lives In Your Reflection
Here is the thing about Eliza. She is someone you will recognise immediately. Maybe not who you are right now, but who you were, or who you will be, or who you know. She has no fixed plan for her future, and yet she moves through the world with this quiet, unshakeable optimism. She has been through things; the film tells you this not through big dramatic monologues but in the small, telling gaps between words.
Then, there is Jen. She’s Eliza's romantic entanglement at the film's opening. It does not take long to understand the dynamic: Eliza cares, but she cannot quite commit, avoidant in that particular way of someone who does not yet fully know herself. While Eliza finds a situationship more comfortable than a definition, Jen gets hurt. There is a back and forth. While Jen does not linger as a major presence in the film, that early thread tells you everything you need to know about where Eliza is emotionally and makes the journey that follows all the more compelling to watch.
She is, in short, that girl. Messy and magnetic and deeply, frustratingly real. And I love her for it.
Stella: Sorted On the Outside, Absolutely Not On the Inside
Here we are, too, introduced to Stella, who appears to have her life together. Stella, who has never quite figured out how to say what she actually feels.
A lot of that emotional guardedness, it turns out, may have roots deeper than I first realised. Stella and Zoe are not just best friends. They are practically family. Their mothers were best friends before they were born, as they grew up in each other's pockets. Watching Stella struggle to explain why Zoe’s ex returning unsettles her, fidgeting with her ring and grasping for words that won’t come, raises a quiet, aching question: was there once something more between them, a feeling that was never quite named?
The film does not answer this directly, and that restraint is to its credit. Whether the director intends Stella and Zoe as an alternative timeline that could have been is deliberately left open. But the subtext hums beneath every shared scene, giving Stella's emotional unavailability a texture that makes complete sense once you notice it.
She is still, after all of it, the girl who cannot say how she feels. When Eliza comes into the picture, that pattern is about to be tested.
The Mall Scene: Four People, One Very Loaded Encounter
If you want to understand the film's central tensions in a single sequence, look no further than the mall scene. Eliza arrives with Carter, her best friend who shows up unasked and cares about her future in the quiet, practical way that real friendship expresses itself. Stella arrives with Zoe. Then, as in films that understand how life actually works, they all run into each other.
The awkwardness between Carter and Zoe, two people who have just ended something, is palpable. But it is Zoe's reaction to Eliza that really catches the eye. A look. A hand pulling Stella back. Protective, territorial, loaded with something unspoken. Is it loyalty? Jealousy? Old feelings resurfacing at the worst possible moment? The film, wisely, lets you sit with the question.
What is clear, though, is that these four people, all so different, each carrying their own unfinished emotional business, are now entangled in ways that will not easily unravel. The tension between all of them is so specific, so observed, so real it becomes almost uncomfortable to watch.
Stella and Eliza: The Slow Burn We Did Not Know We Were Waiting For
Back to Stella and Eliza, because I cannot help myself. The slow build of their dynamic is where the film truly sings. There is a friend-to-crush montage that will have you making involuntary noises. Some looks linger just a second too long. There are moments where the film gets so close to giving you what you want and then… nothing. The indirect kiss scene? I’m still not over it, and will not be for some time.
What makes it work is the contrast at the heart of it. Eliza, adrift and optimistic and unplanned. Stella, structured and dreaming and terrified to fail. Two people who have no business making sense together and yet somehow completely do. Stella has always been the girl who could not say how she felt, but something about Eliza makes that silence feel less like a choice and more like something she is running out of time to maintain.
I am firmly, unequivocally, Team Stella and Eliza. (Someone, please give us a sequel.)
The Film's Biggest Swing (and Why It Almost Works)
In Every Life But This One operates across alternative timelines, each shift marked by a change in colour grading. It is, on paper, a genuinely clever and ambitious structural choice. The kind of thing that makes you go, 'Oh, that's interesting,' when someone explains it to you. Unfortunately, that is also where the difficulty lies.
Because, unless you are a film student or someone who eats editing theory for breakfast, the timeline shifts are not immediately legible on screen. The colour grading, as it stands, does not quite do the heavy lifting the concept requires. What should read as intentional design can land as inconsistency, and the editing, in its current form, does not yet bridge that gap tightly enough for a casual viewer. The repeated dialogue that initially reads as an error becomes, in retrospect, a structural motif. But again, without the key to read it, it mostly just reads as an error.
The director has since clarified the concept, which reframes everything beautifully in hindsight, but a film should not need a footnote to land its own conceit. The Stella and Zoe dynamic, in particular, feels ripe for this framework: the suggestion that theirs might be an alternate timeline, a road not taken, and a feeling that existed in one version of events and not another. It is a genuinely moving idea. It just needs more scaffolding on screen to fully sing.
The team has confirmed the film will be released on YouTube, and that feels like exactly the right opportunity to revisit the edit and give this ambitious idea the clarity it deserves. The bones are strong. The vision is there. I’m rooting for it.
Photo Credits: Renee Marie Joseph
A Film Made With Love, Because It Literally Was
Here is what struck me even before the film began: watching the crew set up the venue, it was immediately apparent that these were not colleagues – these were friends. The ease of it, the familiarity, the way everyone was hands-on and present. By the time the credits rolled with all the behind-the-scenes moments folded in, it felt less like watching a production wrap and more like being invited into something personal.
In Every Life But This One is, at its core, a film about the people who show up for you. Not because they have to, but because they choose to, every time. It asks a question that does not get asked nearly enough: we talk constantly about insecurity in romantic relationships. But what about the insecurity we feel in our closest friendships? The fear of not being enough, of being replaced, of loving someone more than they love you back?
And running underneath all of it is something even quieter: the idea that it does not matter how long you have known someone. You can have a childhood best friend, a person whose mother knew your mother before you were even born, and still find yourself asking who was really there when it mattered. Proximity is not the same as presence. History is not the same as intimacy. The film understands this, and it treats that understanding with the seriousness it deserves.
Belle and Sofea, with the help of their production team, made something imperfect, earnest, and quietly special. In a world still frustratingly stingy with stories about women loving women, in all the forms that love takes, In Every Life But This One feels like a small, necessary gift.
Stay tuned for its YouTube release. Watch it. Feel things.
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