By Liam Jean Pierre
This movie may have been free to watch for one night only, but I would have paid not to see it. On 10 August the Neelsie Roadhouse Cinema, in their generosity towards students, put on a limited free screening of One Night Only. The premise is deceivingly interesting: a romcom set in a surveillance state North America that has gotten rid of bodily autonomy through potentially religious dogma. Sounds fun? It wasn’t. One Night Only is frustrating. It is not just frustrating for the viewers, but for the characters too.
The poster advertising One Night Only. The acting is serviceable, but Callum Turner, (playing Owen) and Monica Barbaro (playing Allie) are left doing the heavy lifting while the script just watches from the hotel chair. Sourced: IMDb
The expository text informs us that premarital sex has been outlawed in the USA and is now only legal for one 12-hour period a year. It places us in New York following the interwoven plots of Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) as they search desperately for sex.
Owen is framed as someone who is faithful to his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) and has gained appreciation for the “mandate”. However, his ideal of sexual exclusivity is thrown into disrepair when, over a romantic dinner, his girlfriend asks if she could sleep with the neighbor. He is encouraged by his girlfriend to balance the sexual ledger and find a one night stand of his own.
Allie is instead bemoaning the difficulty of finding “the one”. On a night when anyone will do, she wants love. This would be a stiff challenge on any other night, but she exacerbates this further with her corny desires.
Between the two of them, the film can’t seem to decide what it actually thinks of the mandate it’s built around. It uses the characters to fence-sit on its own concept. This ultimately leaves the film with at worst nothing to say and at best a muddied notion.
The movie’s main premise is undercooked. For most of the runtime, it’s uncertain whether the film is pro premarital sex or against it, and by the end it seems to lambaste anyone who was against the anti-sex mandate in the first place. At one point one character even says “maybe the fascists were right about this one,” and the tone-deaf film doesn’t seem to know if that’s a joke or the thesis.
This ambiguity doesn’t read as maturity, but instead as intellectual cowardice. The film attempts to play with edgy politics and illicit themes, but lacks the creative courage to go all the way.
Often in the background of a scene we catch hints of civil unrest towards “the mandate”, but it’s never properly explored. It’s just there, unexamined. Is the movie against mass state surveillance? Is it against premarital sex itself? It’s a confused movie, and that confusion shows through its confused cast of characters. That confusion doesn’t stop at the theme; it crashes into the film’s basic line of logic too.
Was the purpose of the law to reduce unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates? Because surely this mandate would dramatically increase sexual assault? How does it even affect teen pregnancy rates when you are only surveilled after you turn 18? Further, the idea that people would just be okay with losing their bodily autonomy and privacy in one go is frankly ridiculous.
This wouldn’t matter as much if the film at least delivered on its premise. A 12-hour window of outlawed behaviour inherently demands high-stakes tension or sharp political satire, but the movie settles for flat comedy and limp wristed commentary.
For a movie that depicts public sex, its result is overwhelmingly clean. The only person who would find this movie raunchy is someone who just recently learnt what a condom is. The sanitisation of the movie leaves the premise impotent.
This is evidenced by the director Will Gluck’s decision to, as he put it, “cut out so much” when regarding the film’s nudity. By actively scrubbing away any sense of raw or dangerous friction, Gluck’s lack of creative courage leaves the film feeling soft and completely neutered.
Visually, the film matches this timidity, trading any sort of atmospheric night-time tension for uninspired rom-com lighting that makes New York look like a pristine advertisement for banality. Except, with the overt product placement of both Durex and KY Jelly, maybe this film would have been better as an actual advertisement.
The acting across the board is serviceable, but Turner and Barbaro are left doing the heavy lifting while the script just watches from the hotel chair. Thankfully, their acting is occasionally able to penetrate the completely forgettable, assembly-line score.
By the time the credits rolled, none of it had come together. The only thing that briefly redeems this movie is Owen and Allie’s sometimes existent chemistry. A movie built around a single high-stakes night needed urgency, clarity and something to say. Instead, it delivers 364 days of buildup for a payoff that is confused, sanitised and, ultimately, forgettable. Save your one night for literally anything else.
