Director Will Gluck (Easy A, Anyone But You) clarified a few ground rules of this new future for Polygon, but he was also pretty cagey about his own film’s world in the same interview. He confirmed the mandate was (barely) passed by Congress and that people can’t marry and divorce an inordinate amount of times just for sex. “You have to stay married for one year and one day before you can get divorced. Because if not, people would just go get married, get divorced, get married, get divorced, right?” he said. But there’s still much left to understand about the rules of the frisky road mapped out in One Night Only.
Some of these technicalities are addressed diegetically. One subplot reveals that those on parole may have their 12-hour “get out of horny jail” cards revoked for prior offenses. When talking to his mom (Molly Ringwald), Owen explains that most of his buddies have gotten hitched, indicating a reverse in the trend of people waiting to get married, something that real-life conservative politicians stressed about birth rates—but doing nothing to subsidize the cost of parenting—would be pleased to hear.
There are also literal signs about the rules littered throughout One Night Only (it is New York City, after all), including ones protesting the mandate. Some note the price surges affecting everyone’s special night, like a barbershop jacking haircut prices up to $165. An Equinox gym ad refers to the “night you’ve been training for all year,” and Duolingo gets some laughs for putting the term “-lingual” to work. But the informative ones are PSAs delineating what’s permissible and what’s illegal for married and unmarried couples, like the big boards behind our two lovebirds when they reunite at an NYPD station. It displays illegal techniques for the unmarried (no 69ing, no threesomes), while legal choices include handholding, watching pornography, dancing, and kissing—but nothing beyond first base. The final permitted image is a bit vague, and could either be seen as holding on to a partner’s butt (above the clothes, you dogs), or controversially, a hand job.
Yet, the odd litigation of what counts as sex only exists in the U.S. In the world of One Night Only, you can and should take that trip you’ve always wanted to take. “There’s also signage in the movie of airlines advertising: Fly to Cuba where it’s always legal! Fly to France where it’s always legal. Fly to Amsterdam where damn it’s legal. So you can leave the country,” Gluck told Polygon. He also shared that tourists who visit the States need their own biosensor to enter, so these weird draconian rules apply to everyone within the borders, not just U.S. citizens. Where and when they get their tattoos (and if they ever get removed) is unclear.
These are just a few of the many questions that come up the longer you think about the new world order of One Night Only. The biggest question mark comes from Allie’s lesbian roommate, who shrugs off the fanfare around this night as a “straight” thing. The queer community has continued to have sex Under His Eye without the government’s meddling. It’s an odd wave-off to explain why not everyone is bound by these rules, but how? Does the biosensor only monitor certain sex acts and not others? Can people hack their biosensor? Does the tattoo consider gay sex somehow different than straight sex? Or is it just that the government’s sexual obsession is confined to promoting heterosexual marriages, so they don’t care what people who fall outside of that definition do? What happens to bisexuals in all of this mess?
Speaking of that biometric widget, it’s also supposed to detect whether or not you’re wearing a condom, but what happens if it breaks or slips? Instant jail time? It’s also supposed to measure some sort of, um, release—of dopamine and testosterone, according to Nick Braun’s business bro character—but how does it tell the difference between intercourse or using sex toys if the result is the same big O? Do marrieds have carte blanche on sex partners so long as they’re also married, or is the biosensor synced with each other’s frequencies, killing swingers parties, orgies in Park Slope, polyamory in Bushwick, and cheating in all five boroughs? Does the porn industry have to move to Canada to film more than 12 hours out of the year?
One Night Only has drawn more than a few passing comparisons to The Purge, a horror franchise that explores the societal chaos that follows when a new law allows all crime to be permissible for 12 hours. As that series progressed, more rules were filled in beyond the vague basic concept. One Night Only wants it both ways. It has plenty of rules and yet, as with any mandate as intrusive in everyone’s lives in a country as large as the United States, not every detail can be explained in a single romantic comedy centered on one couple. What happens in different time zones? This high-concept premise is intriguing at first glance: a sex Purge is a heck of a pitch. But the idea barely holds together even if you can’t stop thinking about its loopholes, which is a weird feeling to leave the theater with when the goal was for you to leave happy because chivalry and romance aren’t yet dead.
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