One Night Only is a [surprisingly] fun sex-fueled Purge Night rom-com
The jokes, which mostly center on how hard it is to find other single people that aren’t total weirdos after you hit a certain age, mostly land; they’d land even if there wasn’t a Sex Purge hanging over everyone like the Dildo of Damocles.
One Night Only. // Courtesy Universal Pictures
I’ll be the first to admit that the logline for One Night Only is pure rage-bait: “What if sex between unmarried people was illegal except for one day a year?” It sounds like something designed to appeal to supposedly sex-averse Gen Zers, or maybe the product of a fledgling screenwriter who watched The Purge and had the inexplicable takeaway “OK, but what if Martial Law Fuckytime?”
Amazingly, it turns out that One Night Only, AKA The Sex Purge Movie, is actually pretty charming. I know. I’m as surprised as you are.
The film takes place in an alternate present where the U.S. government voted three years ago to outlaw premarital sex except for one night a year. Everyone has a biomarker which is green if it’s legal for you to bone (i.e. you’re married or it’s Sex Purge Night), and red if it’s not. If you violate “the mandate,” the biomarker notifies the authorities, who then arrest you.
Sounds like a massive waste of government resources, right? Don’t worry, the characters think so, too. Much like our actual government, the implementation of the mandate seems to have been inefficient and deeply stupid. Much like life under our actual government, many people in the film continue trying to live normal lives despite a major legislative roadblock created by the dumbest people alive inhibiting their ability to do so.
Relatable!
Our main characters are Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro). He’s a pizza shop owner. She sings those lyrics-swapped pop songs that you hear on pharmaceutical ads. Owen plans to propose to his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) on Sex Purge Night, but is unmoored when she tells him she wants to experiment with someone else.
Walking around Manhattan like a sad Charlie Brown, Owen bumps into Allie, but after making a bad first impression, they both move on. Fortunately, these two keep bumping into each other until feelings start to develop.
Turner and Barbaro have decent chemistry, and the supporting cast is peppered with fun stunt casting that allows their one-off interactions to surprise and delight. At one point, Turner turns to his mom (Molly Ringwald!) for advice, but she needs him to leave the house, because she’s trying to hook up with her boyfriend Rick (I am not ruining this reveal because it’s the best part of the movie). The jokes, which mostly center on how hard it is to find other single people that aren’t total weirdos after you hit a certain age, mostly land; they’d land even if there wasn’t a Sex Purge hanging over everyone like the Dildo of Damocles.
One Night Only. // Courtesy Universal Pictures
So, speaking of that Sex Purge (my term, not the movie’s). I imagine you still have some questions.
Somehow, for instance, the U.S. outlawing sex hasn’t triggered mass migration to sex-positive countries, or resulted in loads of quickie marriages followed by quickie divorces. I suspect this is because, as a poster late in the film explains, masturbation is allowed. I’m sure that’s a Supreme Court case and state-by-state referendum for another time.
There’s also a question as to whether queer sex is allowed under the mandate. Allie’s gay roommate (Quintessa Swindell) isn’t participating in Sex Purge Night because, she claims, the LGBTQ+ community has found a way around it. That means the mandate is mostly a problem for the Straights, and I can’t say I’m mad about that.
We are not well. This is documented.
But serious considerations and logic are for a different genre. We’re not watching a Margaret Atwood adaptation. This is rom-com territory. It’s true a smarter filmmaker than Will Gluck (say, John Waters, Gregg Araki or Halina Reijn) might find a way to balance the tropey rom-commyness of all this with actual biting satire and commentary on the genre itself. The result could be something really spectacular. But One Night Only is going for neither profound nor spectacular. It’s going for warm and fun. It mostly achieves that, even if it is under really bizarre circumstances.
