Warning: spoilers ahead.
I went into the premiere of One Night Only with a hazy synopsis in mind and a surplus of questions. Will Gluck’s new rom-com, starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, centres on two singles who meet during the one night a year when single people are permitted to have sex.
Essentially, it’s The Purge if, instead of suspending the laws against murder and mayhem, the state mandated abstinence. I struggled to see how this could be presented as a remotely plausible feature of what otherwise appeared to be a rom-com. What year is this movie set in? How, exactly, did society acquiesce to such a regime? How is this mandate enforced, monitored and, presumably, policed? Also, what the heck?!
We learn within mere seconds (thanks to some handy introductory text) that premarital sex has been outlawed in the US and is now legal for only 12 hours on one night of the year. It’s a government-decreed sexual climate in which being an incel has become a “badge of honour.” In an already deeply fractured political landscape, where the manosphere continues to thrive, the premise feels ironic at best and deeply uncomfortable at worst.
Protection is mandatory (condom price-gouging on the night can set you back as much as $200 apiece), while we’re briefly shown that the consequences of violating the law are severe: a hapless older man is hauled into a police station for not wearing a condom.
And yet, in the world of the film, everyone in America seems to have arrived at a collective acceptance of this arrangement, remarkably willing to participate with scarcely a murmur of riots. It strains credulity, but then again, it’s only a movie. The film’s governing impulse is, after all, that of a rom-com, complete with an ebullient meet-cute and the familiar, golden-hued giddiness of love. Still, I couldn’t quite resist getting caught in the weeds of the specifics of this world.
Eventually, though, I was swept along by the film’s fervent feel-goodness, with Turner and Barbaro proving sufficiently charming to distract me from the murkier corners of its premise.
Against the backdrop of New York City, Owen (Turner) and Allie (Barbaro) each set out to find someone with whom to spend the night. Owen’s girlfriend (Maya Hawke), has decided to hook up with a neighbour, telling Owen that they need to “expand their horizons”. She doesn’t quite break up with him, but grants him his own hall pass for the evening.
After an abortive attempt to go out with her friend—who promptly finds a man and abandons her—Allie returns home, tail between her legs. Her roommate, having none of it, encourages her to seize the occasion and find someone herself.
This is also where we learn that the queer community does not seem particularly troubled by the prohibition. Quintessa Swindell, who plays Barbaro’s roommate, tells Allie early on that they have no intention of participating in the One Night. “Tonight is for the straights,” she explains. “We’ve been dancing around your laws since before the Bible.” An intriguing aside, to say the least.
When Owen and Allie eventually meet, they decide not to sleep together (Allie’s decision, rather than Owen’s) and instead become wingmen for one another, traversing New York in search of potential partners.
Allie, however, is determined not to reduce the evening to something merely transactional. She wants sex to mean something, and seems intent on finding a genuine connection amid the night’s debauchery. As the hours unfold, the pair stumble into a succession of increasingly chaotic situations and potential suitors, with Owen even briefly crossing paths with Julia Fox, who plays a bartender.
Speaking of brief cameos, this movie has an almost absurd number of them. Images of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney briefly appear, a nod to the fact that both starred in director Will Gluck’s Anyone But You. Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale, Ziwe, Este Haim, Nicholas Braun and Jay Ellis also make appearances, while Molly Ringwald plays Owen’s mother, Linda.
It may not surprise you where the story ultimately takes Owen and Allie, but it’s interestingly not as raunchy as the build-up to the film led me to believe. In fact, the takeaway seemed to be that a sex purge might not be the worst idea after all.
Acknowledging the comparisons, Gluck told SlashFilm that he was “very aware of the online discourse about this world and this movie being the ‘sex Purge,’ and rightfully so,” but said he did not want the film to be defined by that comparison. “I don’t want this movie to be about that,” he explained. “Because I love exploring characters and situations.”
He echoed that sentiment in an interview with IndieWire, responding to the similarities by saying, “Yes, we know all about that. The thing about ‘The Purge’ is that when you hear Purge, it always goes to lawlessness. And that’s why that’s not what this movie is.”
Whatever its similarities to The Purge, I left the cinema with a skip in my step, having had a good laugh and already looking forward to watching it again.
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