Trying to explain One Night Only’s tech-enforced sex dystopia

From the omnipresent One Night Only trailer, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the movie glosses over its terrifying and absurd premise — in otherwise normal modern New York, single people can only have sex one night a year — to deliver an entirely traditional romantic comedy.I’m here to report that it does not do that.No, the film is very much about life under Sex Purge Law, but where you might expect questions of politics or religion or fear or humanity, there are instead questions of boning. Questions like “Who should I do sex to and why?” are explored in an episodic format that sees two special hot people (Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner) run into each other over and over but not immediately get busy. That obviously raises more questions! (“WHY NOT?”) Questions are really the joy of this movie, if you find joy in it, as I did. It tries to answer some, but it creates so, so many more.The one you’re probably asking: How is this law possibly enforced?Editor’s note: This post contains One Night Only spoilers.When “the mandate” was passed, three years prior to the events of the movie, all adults of legal age were issued subcutaneous tracking chips with attendant, color-changing tattoos. When you’re unmarried, the tattoos — a little lighthouse for our heroine, the Batman symbol for our hero — are red. You know, for “stop” (having sex). When you wed, they go green. But on “The One Night,” as people and brands alike shorthand Sex Purge Day, reds turn green and pent-up singles barely stop themselves from boinking in the street. Largely they do stop themselves, though, because somehow despite its R rating, this movie isn’t like that.In fact, the movie is somewhat desexed, even though sex is the explicit topic. It is surprisingly amusing, though, if you can quiet your disbelief to only one to two cries of “Really?? This??” per minute. The movie has sort of misfired David Wain energy, with some truly unexpected gags and pleasantly silly set pieces. It helps immensely that Barbaro and Turner are extremely appealing, both individually and as a pair. They have the all-important chemistry that makes romcom heads forgive wild, bizarre sins of plot and conception.One of these sins is arguably the way the chips monitor sexual activity, which is basically “science???” Dopamine and other erotic neurochemicals are measured, and if they’re discovered to be spiking in two people close in proximity, that’s a violation. You can be arrested — although it’s unclear how many violations this takes, as we only see repeat offenders — and banned from sex even on The One Night. While I can tell you there are no special sex cops, only an exhausted-seeming regular NYPD, this law enforcement technology does engender many more questions. As Verge senior copy editor Kallie Plagge asks, what if you both see a puppy at the same time? What if you do drugs together, asks senior social media editor Tristan Cooper — or if you self-pleasure in the presence of another, how far apart do you have to be? What if you have roommates? I don’t know!!It’s purposefully hand-wavy and a little vague, but maybe not as completely out there as we’d like. Wearables have been proposed that could monitor your sexual fidelity via heart rate, skin temperature, and movement-detecting sensors.Information about how exactly this became a political reality is not the particular interest of screenwriter Travis Braun or director Will Gluck, but it is allowed to dribble out in the background as Barbaro and Turner separately scheme to get some.(Sorry, let’s pause here. Actual question No. 1: Why do these two absurdly attractive, totally charming people even have to try, especially on a night such as this? We learn early on that Turner’s handsome pizzamaker had a mishap with his intended, but Barbaro’s character was apparently too busy with her career singing lyrically tweaked pop ballads for pharmaceutical commercials to meet a decent guy in the previous 364 days. That might be even more outlandish than the government decree they’re living under, but the movie makes it clear she’s a romantic — in classic romcom logic that’s a practically insurmountable flaw, until you find the perfect person to mount.)We learn that Congress passed the measure at the urging of a Christian-coded technomegacorp that makes the chips and also employs Nicholas Braun. We do not learn where the Durex and EPT lobbies were during this vote. We learn that the party line, from the company’s smarmy CEO — distinctly more JD Vance-like than Elon Musk-esque — is that people wanted a return to innocence, and apparently that’s all we’re getting. It’s also implied by a single queer character that queer people have been “getting around” the straights’ sex laws for time immemorial, so this is NBD to them, but this is less a commentary on queer ingenuity or resistance than it is a reason to make that character sit this one out for a babysitting gig. We don’t get a good answer on the divorce or birth rate in SexPurgelandia — although teen pregnancy is down, which… aren’t the kids not chipped? — and it’s unclear if married people can swing (I’m guessing yes).Where’s the pushback? Where are the people digging the chips out of their skin, refusing to get tagged, storming the Capitol and doing it doggy-style on alternate-universe Nancy Pelosi’s desk? That might be the film’s one kind of neat trick, if you’re feeling very generous. This law is widely unpopular but only lacklusterly protested by a complacent public. We see plenty of graffiti, “Resist” signs in brownstone windows, a well-funded benefit concert. But we see a lot more corporate buy-in with cutesy “One Night”-themed advertising. A society too busy buying and selling things to fight back against religiously inflected fascistic oppression and sex weirdness? I can’t say I have questions about where the creators got that idea.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Meredith Haggerty