Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said that everything in the world is about sex except sex: sex is about power. So it makes sense why the government bans premarital relations in the new romantic comedy “One Night Only”: in our withering gerontocracy, it’s yet another lever of power that the boomers refuse to hand down.
The film never explains how such a law passed in this not-too-distant future, only that it did so with bipartisan support. Perhaps it was a Josephite marriage between the social conservatives and certain factions of the left who think flirting requires a notarized release form. Every single single citizen is marked with a biometric tattoo on their wrist which tracks their dopamine; if two tattoos in proximity reach heightened levels, SWAT swarms in and turn the lovebirds to jailbirds.
The one concession is described by the movie’s title: a twelve-hour window where the rules against premarital tomfoolery are relaxed, and you’re allowed to fool Tom just a little.
This is a rather generous allowance: one can’t imagine Sharia law hosting a NASCAR event for women. Only three years since the law passed and it has already become a national holiday, like a Black Friday where it is the celebrants who are on sale. Everyone is champing at the bit after a year of chastity, not knowing it’s the 31st year of chastity that proves the hardest. While there’s postures of resistance, the funniest gag of the movie is how society secretly enjoys the stricture and release, like a somehow randier Mardi Gras. It seems absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.
The movie follows two young lovers bound to have their stars crossed. There’s Owen (Callum Turner) who planned on proposing to his girlfriend, only to find she wants to sample the proverbial buffet. He decides he might as well fill his plate, though you can tell he’s a romantic playing at lothario. Then there’s Allie (Monica Barbaro) who also desires something more real, even if trying tonight is like trying to order foie gras in the Taco Bell drive-thru. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so she hits the town in a dress held together with clasps and wishful thinking.
It’s no spoiler that either fate or the divine machinations of romcom plotting (if there is such a distinction) will drive these two together. They were bound to find each other eventually, if only because they’re the only two people in New York City who prefer a residency over a one night stand. Another of the movie’s silent observations is how such a law will do nothing to encourage marriage. As we’ve seen play out with declining birth rates and surveys on sexual activity, young urbanites would far rather commit to celibacy than commit to commitment.
There’s been online chatter about how this film is a crypto-fascist text (think Leni Riefenstahl by way of Nora Ephron). Politely, I find this utterly moronic. As a completist of director William Gluck’s non-Peter Rabbit filmography, I can attest he is one of our earthier romcom auteurs. His most recent film “Anyone But You” certainly didn’t hurt for skin and sin, and I doubt he’s taken a sudden pivot to puritanism in the autumn of his career. These more ideological critics are just mistaking satire for prescription; the film isn’t an endorsement of a nationwide ban, but the mad rush for hanky panky is a parody of our own societal mores, and how difficult it is to find love when every day is sex purge day.
Though we’ve improved in many ways since the days you could buy a wife for the price of a mule, modern courtship proves no less transactional. Dating apps distill a person down to a few deceptively angled photos and a hiking hobby you lie about, and even if swiped right you are funneled into a hookup culture that isn’t particularly conducive to human flourishing. Traditionally you had to at least lie about your intentions to extract physicality, the problem these days is that everyone is too honest. Hookups become the gate of entry and the lonely pay the toll. It’s fundamentally rewritten our love language: when the world is full of hammers, there’s an expectation to get nailed.
“One Night Only” is about that illusion of choice, in both directions. When our lovers finally reunite near the exemption window and the end of the movie, they do the math and realize there’s just enough time for consummation (good for them). They also realize that they feel compelled toward the deed by the deadline itself. The ban is still dictating their behavior, and if sex is secretly about power, then the government is lording that power over them. They instead choose to wait until next year, to see if what they feel is real and to prove that it is ultimately their choice to make. So yes, government mandated virtue is hardly virtue at all, but the film also recognizes that sometimes eros is knowing when to keep things zipped up.
While every generation believes they’re the ones who invented sex, this current generation has a real claim for novelty. With birth control and dating apps it really is as simple and consequence-free as a few swipes and a click. The romcom has always been an inherently conservative genre, as the narrative naturally funnels its heroes to conjugal bliss; this was at the insistence of an audience who felt funneled in the same direction. But as marriage and indeed relationship rates decline, this puts “One Night Only” and the whole genre in an interesting place.
Monogamy is no longer inevitable for lack of better options, as those better options have since arrived. Instead, love becomes a radical act of free will, turning down the gluttony of options before you and the culture that enables it all for something smaller, but not lesser. If “One Night Only” is a microcosm of the wider problem, then its ending suggests a solution: commitment, but not because you told us to.
