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One Night Only is a Sex-Negative Rom-Com in Both Subject and Spirit

Somehow, I didn’t expect the movie about a dystopia where casual sex is illegal to be particularly anti-casual sex itself. The characters bemoan the status quo of their world every so often and there are anti-mandate proclamations all around, but most people seem to shrug it off as an annoyance  more than a genuine infringement on civil liberties. There is a disillusioned apathy with the government suppression (someone comments “this is what you get when you’re a one-issue voter”), musings about getting around it or bringing it down are not taken seriously, and it is even bestowed a kind of legitimacy by the end.
Of course, One Night Only is not a movie very interested in the implications of its premise. Rather the premise is just an excuse for a series of scenarios befitting a generic enemies-to-lovers rom-com. Director Will Gluck and writer Travis Braun perhaps did not think through what they were actually saying by attaching this novel kind of synopsis to a more conventional format. But doing so really makes the movie’s intentions a mess. And it’s especially bizarre because apart from some of the world-building and the general air of horniness that is necessitated to pervade to get the heroes through their slew of episodes, this same movie could have been made without the gimmick.
That gimmick is of course “the Purge” but for extramarital sex. Three years prior to when the movie is set, U.S. Congress outlawed all non-marital sex and in that short period of time developed a way to police sexual activity via bio-detecting tattoos on everyone’s wrist. As a “compromise” one night of the year (and it’s never specified exactly when) there is a twelve-hour exemption window that everyone awaits in (quite literally) heated anticipation. Whole dating structures revolve around this ‘one night only’. Owen (Callum Turner), the owner of a New York pizza shop intends to have sex with his girlfriend Malika (Maya Hawke) and propose to her, as many of his friends have done partly just to get out of the enforced abstinence, but she decides to use the occasion to sleep with someone else. Frustrated and desperate to make use of his one annual chance at sex, Owen goes into the night in search of someone else. Meanwhile Allie (Monica Barbaro), a single commercial singer, is looking to meet a new guy with whom she can develop a meaningful connection, likewise determined. Obviously of course this pair cross paths, but it is not the smooth expected meet-cute -rather they got off on the wrong foot and spend the night on parallel tracks, running into and occasionally helping each other while a gradual romance takes shape.
The dynamic between Owen and Allie feels like a deliberate attempt to recapture the same sensibility as between the leads in Gluck’s last film, Anyone But You. And it only feels half as natural here. That has little to do with the performances of Barbaro and Turner -both are perfectly fine and have decent enough chemistry. But their banter and interactions feel far more orchestrated by both convention and the desperate nature of the film’s main pretense. Given the stakes presented there is no reason past the second encounter for them not to sleep together given their clear rhythm. But apparently that is not what Gluck feels.
Though it might appear in some scenes to be a mere catalyst for shenanigans, the movie’s overall concept and how it plays out for its characters reveals a weird, almost prudish attitude towards sex by the filmmakers. As Owen and Allie embark on their individual quests for the night, they view every sexual coupling around them with an air of mild disgust. It could be mistaken for envy if not for the emphasis on both characters’ beliefs (stronger in Allie) that relationships should be built on ‘more’ than sex. It is reflective in a conversation they have late in the film about their favourite parts of sex -Allie prefers the build-up, Owen the aftermath -neither the actual act of intercourse. In another context, such sentiments might be honestly sweet, but here it attaches some validation to the central oppression -which the movie is able to identify in those terms, casting the mouthpiece as a thin GOP analogue and acknowledging the mandate as a form of fascism. But then one character muses about the apparent upsides to relationship dynamics in this reality and suggests in the cursed line that “maybe the fascists were right” about sex -and there is no rebuke to that notion. It’s worth noting too that for a movie hinging on the topic of sex in a context that should be awash in it, Gluck shows no sex or even any real overture of sexy interplay, using forced needle-drops as a substitute for erotic tension and playing almost all horniness for humour. Everybody we see who isn’t Owen and Allie is framed as a joke or a degenerate who can’t keep it in their pants. Add to that a bizarre comment about homosexuality in relation to this status quo and an ending that affirms a virtue of abstinence in a quite literal anti-climax, it adds up to the most explicitly anti-sex rom-com I’ve ever seen, one that in its tone obnoxiously judges those who have a more robust, healthier attitude towards sex in intimate relationships than its squeamish protagonists.
Partaking in this regressive thematic exercise and in some cases contributing to its mocking depiction of casual coitus and lust are a very bizarre assortment of actors whom Gluck calls in favours for. Apart from a wasted Hawke, who would make a far more compelling rom-com lead than Barbaro, Molly Ringwald appears as Owen's mother with LeVar Burton of all people as her lover. Michelle Hurd and Mike Birbiglia show up as a pair of police officers, Julia Fox appears as a bartender Owen endeavours to have sex with, Quintessa Swindell is Allie's unconcerned gay roommate, and a stream of prospects in Allie's world include Okieriete Onaodowan, Jay Ellis, Ben Marshall, and Nicholas Braun.
There are some funny moments that come from these parts and the various comedies of errors Owen and Allie suffer through that might work well divorced from the concept. There is even some good sexual humour every now and again. But in other areas of their odysseys, the jokes feel supremely forced -as is the case with a music idol of Allie's played by Charlie Gillespie who is unsurprisingly a very bad fit for her, and an episode in which Owen breaks into his mother's house with a woman played by Ella Louden he picked up at an exclusive club. Also, while the movie makes hints towards outrageous sexual content, such as Owen and Allie elaborately stealing the last condom in town and Owen testing out the durability of a surgical glove in its place, a premise like this involving an orgiastic bacchanal of pent-up libido demands a more raw and explicit take than Gluck is comfortable with. Even in hiding the actual sex it is shocking how limited the parameters of sexual expression and imagery are for this ostensibly R-rated comedy.
An air of sexual frankness and frankly progressive aesthetic colouring coats this film and one would be forgiven for expecting that in the movie's romance and political theming -Gluck after all has a record with movies like Friends With Benefits and even Anyone But You being sexually open or just openly sexy. Perhaps it is the influence of Braun's script or just a futile effort at hollow political outreach, or simply an effect of the hassle of carving out a traditional rom-com housed within such a charged premise. Whatever the impetus, its result is broadly exhausting. One Night Only might satisfy some prudes and puri-teens with its ham-fisted abstinence messaging if they have a weak sense of humour and can get past the crude material and references. Rom-com addicts may even enjoy it for its generally attractive though neutered protagonists. But nobody else will fall for its device. Contrary to its own statement, it is not better than sex.

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