One Night Only is an uncomfortably fascist rom-com – but I liked it

Callum Turner’s new film One Night Only has an alarmingly fascist premise, which bans premarital sex and is rather at odds with the giddy, often slapstick approach the film generally takes. It’s frankly disturbing to imagine living in a world where hook-ups are over and every relationship is puritanically unconsummated until after wedded bliss for… reasons that create this Purge-esque rom-com – but with sex not serial killing. The act is illegal for singles, with everyone sporting a red tattoo that only turns green for sex after you tie the knot or on this one night each year. However, for all its flaws (queer relationships are quickly ducked around with a catch-all ‘we’ve been skirting your laws since before the Bible’, which apparently forgives the film including any) there is enjoyment in One Night Only and its messiness. Easy A director Will Gluck is a safe pair of hands at the helm, while Turner and his co-star Monica Barbaro spark off each other well and are gamely committed to the silliness. I don’t see a world in which this becomes a rom-com staple , but there is a certain quality – perhaps it’s just the chaos – that gives it repeat watchability though. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Three years into the casual sex ban and the ‘special’ night has come around again, with singles giddy at the prospect of getting their rocks off with quite desperate excitement. Pizza parlour owner Owen (Turner) though is ready to propose to his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) over a special dinner, but she has sex on the mind – and not with him. Meanwhile the romantic Ali (A Complete Unknown Oscar nominee Monica Barbaro), a jingle singer, is still hoping to somehow hunt down a proper connection in this dating hellscape. However, she gets abandoned , when said friend encounters a prince from Sierra Leone in line for the toilet. Callum Turner, Monica Barbaro, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, King Princess. Molly Ringwald, Levar Burton One Night Only is in UK cinemas from Friday, August 28. It released in the US on August 7. Owen and Ali’s meet-cute is, entertainingly, anything but, with him vomiting on the pavement after eating both meals at his proposal dinner. The film then does well to keep up the will-they-won’t-they tension as they flit across the city on separate – but often colliding – tracks.